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Paper short abstract:

2008 represents an important date for contemporary economics. That year not only saw a significant financial crisis but even the issue of the first green bond and bitcoin’s first white paper. After more than a decade, it’s time to analyze how those technologies are transforming capitalism

Paper long abstract:

Technology is usually seen as a neutral or positive term: it indicates devices or tools improving humans’ work. It comes from the Greek τέχνη, “art of doing something”, “expertise”; current mainstream use then indicates only the material, tangible part of this improving mechanism. However, critical authors (eg. Foucault, Hornborg) often used this term to refer to its immaterial meaning, highlighting how intangible devices embed/depend on/enforce power relationships actually managing humans’ economic activities (on the broader definition given by Godelier). Another widely used and ambiguous term nowadays is the word “crisis”; even if it usually carries a negative meaning, it comes from the ancient Greek κρίσις, “to make a choice”. In fact, we are facing changes, but, given current inequalities, few people are benefitting from this. What technologies and devices play a pivotal role in this changing/crisis period?

Drawing on critical anthropology, in this paper we aim to demonstrate how the very notion of responsibility can be seen as one of the technologies employed after 2008 by the financial sector to solve the crisis in its favour, that is transforming capitalism in what has been called (Varoufakis, Durand) “technofeudalism”; we will do this by unpacking and defetishizing mainstream discourses on technology, finance and environment, focusing in particular on the use of blockchain to tackle the climate change