Experiments in market creation: BM&F and the forging of an economic frontier

• Grant number: 17/04143-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Start date: August 01, 2017
• End date: February 28, 2018
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Anna Catarina Morawska Vianna
• Grantee: Anna Catarina Morawska Vianna
• Host Investigator: Caitlin Zaloom
• Host Institution: Centro de Educação e Ciências Humanas (CECH). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: New York University, United States

Abstract

Based on wide documental research on the BM&FBovespa archives, as well as on fieldwork at the BM&F office in New York, this research project aims to explore the development of the futures market in Brazil, with particular attention to: a) the socio-technical assemblages that enabled the creation and transformation of the futures market from the 1980s onwards; and b) the dissemination of a global financist economic model shared by both market and state agents. As a visiting scholar at the New York University Institute for Public Knowledge, I expect to be able to deepen my knowledge of financial anthropology, conduct fieldwork at the BM&FBovespa office in New York and make use of the NYU library to prepare the manuscript of a book and an academic paper to be submitted to an international journal of anthropology. This period abroad is the first step towards a research project of broader scope and duration on the relation between the futures market and Brazilian agribusiness. What are the impacts of the increasing financialization of agribusiness in family firms driven by strict moral codes and for whom reputations rest on the balance between debt-management and risk-taking? How do speculators and producers relate the presentist movements of future prices and the cyclic movements of the land in their respective calculating techniques? The activities undertaken as a visiting scholar will help situate and reshape these preliminary questions in reference to the latest discussions on the anthropology of finance.