Our Lives in Their Portfolios: Why Asset Managers Own the Modern City
Schedule
Tue Nov 19 2024 at 02:15 pm to 03:30 pm
UTC+01:00Location
Auditorium 4, Eilert Sundts hus, Moltke Moes vei 31, Blindern | Oslo, OS
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About the lecture:Banks have taken a backseat since the global financial crisis over a decade ago. Today, our new financial masters are asset managers, like Blackstone and BlackRock. And they don't just own financial assets. The roads we drive on; the pipes that supply our drinking water; energy systems for electricity and heat; hospitals, schools, and even the homes in which many of us live – all now swell asset managers’ bulging investment portfolios. As the owners of more and more of the basic building blocks of everyday life, and especially urban life, asset managers shape the lives of each and every one of us in profound and disturbing ways. This lecture aims to peel back the veil on “asset manager society”, showing that asset managers are unlike traditional owners of housing and other essential infrastructure. Buying and selling these life-supporting assets at a dizzying pace, the crux of their business model is not long-term investment and careful custodianship but making quick profits for themselves and the investors that back them.
About the speaker:
Brett Christophers is Professor of Human Geography at the Institute of Housing and Urban Research, Uppsala University. His books include The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain (2018), Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It? (2020) and The Price is Wrong: Why Capitalism Won't Save the Planet (2024), all published by Verso.
About Cities & Society:
Cities & Society is a seminar and podcast series from the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo. By inviting expertise working at the frontiers of urban research, this seminar and podcast series seeks to address current debates about the relationship between cities and social change, contribute to the public discourse on urbanism and support the development of a dynamic and robust research environment around contemporary urban issues at the University of Oslo. The podcast series is a part of the University of Oslo's podcast platform, Universitetsplassen.
Find the podcast here:
https://www.uio.no/om/aktuelt/universitetsplassen/podkast/
For more information about the seminar and podcast series, please see the website: https://www.sv.uio.no/iss/english/research/networks/cities-and-society/
Sign up for our mailing list to receive invitations to seminars and updates on our work: nettskjema.no/a/286242
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Where is it happening?
Auditorium 4, Eilert Sundts hus, Moltke Moes vei 31, Blindern, Moltke Moes vei 31, 0851 Oslo, Norge,Oslo, NorwayEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
