Investment and Rapid Climate Change as Biopolitics: Foucault and Governance of the Self and Others through ESG

Timothy W. Luke ()
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Timothy W. Luke: Department of Political Science, Virginia Tech, 531 Major Williams Hall, 220 Stanger Street, Blacksburg, VA 24061, USA

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 22, 1-11

Abstract: Environmental, social and governance (ESG) investment strategies today are an established practice in personal and public finance. They also provide crucial benchmarks for corporate social responsibility policy in gauging the performance of due diligence and return on investment by financial managers. This study explores the growing conflict within these economic and policy networks over “value-oriented”, or total financial return, and “values-oriented”, or comprehensive non-financial impact, capital investment in recent years. How to balance these two discursive constructions of value in the pursuit of “sustainability” for both the economy and the environment at the same time is an operational challenge that managers, environmentalists and scientists have not yet fully answered. It also indicates how Michel Foucault’s approach to the power/knowledge nexus in biopolitics provides a useful perspective on these ideologically and politically charged debates over how to invest capital and steer business activity to deliver solid returns in the market as well as support more ethical and economical public policies to respond to climate change, social injustice and governance failure.

Keywords: Foucault; discourse; dispositive; dispositional analytics; corporate social responsibility; environmental social governance; sustainability; corporate accountability; risk management (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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