On September 10, 2018, FESA PI Knut Christian Myhre presented a paper at a conference entitled Financialisation Beyond Crisis: Connections, Contradictions, Contestations held at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle, Germany.
The conference was organised by Chris Hann, Professor and Director of the Max Planck Institute, and Don Kalb, Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen and Utrecht University, and marked the end for a research group on the topic of financialisation.
The event featured 14 presentations by budding and established researchers based in Europe, as well as keynote lectures by Deborah James (LSE) and Don Kalb (Bergen/Utrecht). In addition, senior scholars, such as Stephen Gudeman (Minnesota), Laura Bear (LSE), James Carrier (MPI), and Gavin Smith (Toronto), served as discussants, along with the organisers and the keynote speakers.
Myhre's paper was entitled Financialisation and the Welfare State: The Case of the Norwegian Oil Fund and concerned how the Government Pension Fund Global entails a custodial finance that meets a multitude of social commitments and implicates the Norwegian welfare state in international financial markets.
A joint publication is planned as part of the Max Planck Studies in Anthropology and Economy of Berghahn Books.