The Marketisation of Social Justice: The Case of the Sudan Divestment Campaign

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes The author would like to acknowledge the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada for their generous support in financing this project, and also to thank the anonymous reviewers, whose comments and criticisms greatly aided in improving the readability and the overall quality of the argument. This article draws heavily on the final chapter of Soederberg (2009 Soederberg, S. 2009 forthcoming. Corporate power and ownership in contemporary capitalism: the politics of resistance and domination, London: Routledge/RIPE Series. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Public companies issue securities (stocks) through an initial public offering. Securities are traded on at least one stock exchange (for example, New York Stock Exchange) or over-the-counter market. For an excellent treatment of finance in everyday life, see Langley (2008) Langley, P. 2008. The everyday life of global finance: saving and borrowing in Anglo-America, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. The depiction of the Sudan government as a 'killing machine' is used by many human rights organisations, including the Save Darfur Coalition. See, for example, www.savedarfur.org/page/content/torchrelay/ny/ [Accessed 20 May 2008]. This is borrowed from an anonymous reviewer of the essay, who eloquently and succinctly summarised the main thrust of the marketisation of social justice as it is used here. Unlike the more secure defined-benefit (DB) plans in which employers bear the investment risk, defined-contribution (DC) plans are subject to more volatility as the 'participant's benefits depend solely on the amount of the contribution and the return earned on investing it, the employee bears all the investment risk' (Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco 2003 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. 2003. The present and future of pension insurance, Available from: www.frbsf.org/publications/economics/letter/2003/el2003-25.html [Accessed on 3 August 2008] [Google Scholar]). For more information, see www.unpri.org as well as Soederberg (2009 Soederberg, S. 2009 forthcoming. Corporate power and ownership in contemporary capitalism: the politics of resistance and domination, London: Routledge/RIPE Series. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). For a discussion of the construction of the market in terms of performativity, see, for example, Mackenzie (2006) Mackenzie, D. 2006. An engine, not a camera: how financial models shape markets, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]. Munnell and Sunden point out that the 10 per cent figure supplied by the Social Investment Forum (2005) is not only too small to affect the financial fate of targeted firms, which is the goal of negative social screening, but also tends to overstate the importance of social investing due to inconsistencies in measurement (Munnell and Sunden 2005 Munnell, A. H. and Sunden, A. 2005. "Social investing: pension plans should just say "no",". In Pension fund politics: the dangers of socially responsible investing, Edited by: Entine, J. Washington, DC: AEI Press. [Google Scholar]: 21). There is far from a consensus on this term. See, for example, Boyer (2000) Boyer, R. 2000. Is a Finance-led Growth Regime a Viable Alternative to Fordism? A Preliminary Analysis. Economy and Society, 29(1): 111–45. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] and Martin (2002) Martin, R. 2002. The financialization of daily life, Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. [Google Scholar]. For more elaboration see Soederberg (2009 Soederberg, S. 2009 forthcoming. Corporate power and ownership in contemporary capitalism: the politics of resistance and domination, London: Routledge/RIPE Series. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). See, for example, background papers on Save Darfur's website, www.savedarfur.org; Tamm (2004) Tamm, I. J. 2004. Dangerous Appetites: Human Rights Activism and Conflict Commodities. Human Rights Quarterly, 26: 687–704. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]. It should be noted that the bill, and the wider Sudan divestment campaign, have their roots in the comprehensive trade and economic sanctions originally imposed by President Clinton in 1997 because of Sudan's alleged support for terrorism. This Executive Order, which in effect sought to block all US companies from doing business in Sudan, helped to transform the nature of investment in Sudan to one of portfolio holdings of foreign (public) companies, hence the importance of the divestment initiative (see Reeves 2002 Reeves, S. 2002. Oil Development in Sudan. Review of African Political Economy, 29(91): 167–69. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]: 169). This has led to the ability of major corporations to slip under the food and medicine clause in the embargo. Coca-Cola, for example, sells its syrup to a Sudanese company, whose US$140 million dollar factory currently churns out about 100,000 bottles of soda daily. See New York Times (2006 New York Times. 2006. War in Sudan? Not where the oil wealth flows. New York Times, 24 October [Google Scholar]). See also Sudan Divestment Task Force (2007). For example, based on an analysis performed by State Street Global Advisors for Calvert, the removal of the highest offending companies from the major indices causes a negligible deviation in their market characteristics. Only one company on the list would need to be excluded from US market indices, resulting in just three basis points (0.03 per cent) of tracking error (a measure of the standard deviation of the difference between expected portfolio return and the index return) from the S&P 500 Index. Meanwhile, the primary MSCI indices (www.mscibarra.com/about) are affected by less than 20 basis points (0.20 per cent). This allows passive and active managers to continue to apply their strategies with little additional risk. See Calvert (Group) Online (29 October 2007). For more information about the New York Times advertisement, see www.summitreports.com/sudan/ See Amnesty International website: www.amnesty.ca/instantkarma/campaign.php

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