On Monday November 25, Knut Christian Myhre presented a paper entitled Reframing Welfare: Expectations, Collaboration, and Ownership at the World's Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund at the Monday Seminar of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Chicago.
The presentation occurred on the invitation of Dr Kathryn Takabvirwa, convenor of the Monday Seminar for 2019-2020.
Myhre's presentation cocerned the instruments by which Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) influence the corporations in which the Norwegian Government Pension Fund Global (GPFG) has an ownership stake. The paper focused especially on the seven expectation documents that orchestrate the company dialogue, which form part of NBIM’s primary and prioritized means for the exercise of ownership.
In his presentation, Myhre described how the drafting of the expectation documents turn on a productive incompleteness that facilitates complex collaborative relations, where agency assumes a particular form. He moreover discussed how these processes mobilise a range of competencies and how they facilitate the integration of environmental and social agendas as objectives of the corporations.
On this basis, Myhre argued that the documents reframe welfare in terms that complement yet exceed the nation-state. He moreover argued that they render macroeconomics amenable to affect through collaboration and carefully-crafted conversations, which in turn can be approached and accessed in ethnographic terms.
The seminar was attended by faculty and graduate students of UChicago's Department of Anthropology.