The Futures of Finance Conference
Arjun Appadurai, Bethany MacLean, Robert Meister
Friday 13 April, 2012
9am - 6pm, $0
NYU, Institute for Public Knowledge
20 Cooper Square, Floor Seven
How is the knowledge about finance that is being produced in so many locations and across so many disciplines in the social sciences and the humanities within the academy related to finance as the assemblage of technical operations, practices, and regulative constraints by which contemporary competitive global capitalism now operates?
How, in other words, are the financial techniques behind the increasing financialization of everyday life related to professional, public, and private narratives of social relations?
Could an interdisciplinary conference with participants from inside the practical world of finance and its regulation and from the worlds of social scientific analysis and cultural critique create the foundation for an ongoing conversation and social network dedicated to bringing wide public attention to the need for new modes of public awareness, regulation, and intervention through which contemporary finance and the general interest can be mutually articulated?
To many of us, how the question of the possible futures of finance is framed seems an urgent matter. A conference dedicated to laying the groundwork for a network of financial practitioners, regulators, financial journalists, and established and younger scholars dedicated to a public conversation in which the future of finance is framed as one, simultaneously, of regulatory practice, specialized (even arcane) technical knowledge, and the social narration of everyday life, we believe, will make an important contribution in the collective creation of that future.
It now seems an opportune moment to create a network of practitioners, media commentators, established scholars, younger scholars, and graduate students to create a public conversation concerning how finance, conceived as technical economic practice, and finance, narrated as a logic of social relations, can be brought together in the contemporary pursuit of the public good “undertaken without nostalgia.â€
Already at several sites around the world, including Copenhagen, Berlin, Tokyo, Brooklyn, and Nolita, we are beginning to see emergent forms of “indie-capitalism†that depart from the norms and assumptions underlying traditional “high finance†including such core concepts as “scalability†and “sustainability.†To construct an authoritative interpretive community within which to understand and debate the implications and opportunities such developments represent is a crucially important task.
Futures of Finance will combine panel discussions (centered on three broad areas: 1) Banks and Money, 2) Financial Cultures and Debt Movements, 3) Scholarly Disciplines and Financial Literacy) with a Graduate Fellows Symposium to lay the groundwork for a long-term network of finance practitioners and scholars whose work resists standard academic or disciplinary categorization.
9:00 AM Opening Remarks
Arjun Appadurai, Godard Professor of Media, Culture & Communication, New York University
9:30 AM Panel Discussion: Money & Banking
Prabhat Patnaik, Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning | Jawaharlal Nehru University
Michael MacDonald, Frederick L. Schuman Professor of International Relations, Williams College
William Cohan, Journalist and Author, Fortune, New York Times, Vanity Fair, and others.
11:15 AM Panel Discussion: Financial Cultures
Caitlin Zaloom, Assistant Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University
Bethany MacLean, Journalist for Vanity Fair and co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
1:30 PM Panel Discussion: Financial Literacies and Scholarly Knowledge
Randy Martin, Chair, Art & Public Policy, New York University, Tisch School for the Arts
Bob Meister, Professor of Social Sciences & Political Thought, University of California, Santa Cruz
Lynn Stout, Paul Hastings Professor of Corporate & Securities Law, University of California, Los Angeles
3:15 PM Panel Discussion: Financial Practices & Interpretations
Benjamin Lee, University Professor of Anthropology & Philosophy, New School Universtiy
Emanuel Derman, Professor of Professional Practice, Industrial Engineering & Operations Research | Columbia University
Michael Laskawy, Visiting Scholar, NYU Rudin Cente; recently Senior Economic Advisor to Senator Charles Schumer and Director of the Senate's Joint Economic Committee
5:00PM Closing Remarks: Robert Meister
How, in other words, are the financial techniques behind the increasing financialization of everyday life related to professional, public, and private narratives of social relations?
Could an interdisciplinary conference with participants from inside the practical world of finance and its regulation and from the worlds of social scientific analysis and cultural critique create the foundation for an ongoing conversation and social network dedicated to bringing wide public attention to the need for new modes of public awareness, regulation, and intervention through which contemporary finance and the general interest can be mutually articulated?
To many of us, how the question of the possible futures of finance is framed seems an urgent matter. A conference dedicated to laying the groundwork for a network of financial practitioners, regulators, financial journalists, and established and younger scholars dedicated to a public conversation in which the future of finance is framed as one, simultaneously, of regulatory practice, specialized (even arcane) technical knowledge, and the social narration of everyday life, we believe, will make an important contribution in the collective creation of that future.
It now seems an opportune moment to create a network of practitioners, media commentators, established scholars, younger scholars, and graduate students to create a public conversation concerning how finance, conceived as technical economic practice, and finance, narrated as a logic of social relations, can be brought together in the contemporary pursuit of the public good “undertaken without nostalgia.â€
Already at several sites around the world, including Copenhagen, Berlin, Tokyo, Brooklyn, and Nolita, we are beginning to see emergent forms of “indie-capitalism†that depart from the norms and assumptions underlying traditional “high finance†including such core concepts as “scalability†and “sustainability.†To construct an authoritative interpretive community within which to understand and debate the implications and opportunities such developments represent is a crucially important task.
Futures of Finance will combine panel discussions (centered on three broad areas: 1) Banks and Money, 2) Financial Cultures and Debt Movements, 3) Scholarly Disciplines and Financial Literacy) with a Graduate Fellows Symposium to lay the groundwork for a long-term network of finance practitioners and scholars whose work resists standard academic or disciplinary categorization.
9:00 AM Opening Remarks
Arjun Appadurai, Godard Professor of Media, Culture & Communication, New York University
9:30 AM Panel Discussion: Money & Banking
Prabhat Patnaik, Professor, Centre for Economic Studies and Planning | Jawaharlal Nehru University
Michael MacDonald, Frederick L. Schuman Professor of International Relations, Williams College
William Cohan, Journalist and Author, Fortune, New York Times, Vanity Fair, and others.
11:15 AM Panel Discussion: Financial Cultures
Caitlin Zaloom, Assistant Professor of Social & Cultural Analysis, New York University
Bethany MacLean, Journalist for Vanity Fair and co-author of The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron
1:30 PM Panel Discussion: Financial Literacies and Scholarly Knowledge
Randy Martin, Chair, Art & Public Policy, New York University, Tisch School for the Arts
Bob Meister, Professor of Social Sciences & Political Thought, University of California, Santa Cruz
Lynn Stout, Paul Hastings Professor of Corporate & Securities Law, University of California, Los Angeles
3:15 PM Panel Discussion: Financial Practices & Interpretations
Benjamin Lee, University Professor of Anthropology & Philosophy, New School Universtiy
Emanuel Derman, Professor of Professional Practice, Industrial Engineering & Operations Research | Columbia University
Michael Laskawy, Visiting Scholar, NYU Rudin Cente; recently Senior Economic Advisor to Senator Charles Schumer and Director of the Senate's Joint Economic Committee
5:00PM Closing Remarks: Robert Meister