Abstract
Financial markets occupy a privileged place in the global economy and wield a large and growing influence on public policy and collective decision-making. The developing finance subfields of climate and sustainable finance situate financial markets as both the principal problem and solution to the climate crisis and environmental degradation. The financial industry continues to fund fossil fuels, resource extraction, and social inequalities that produce and exacerbate current environmental, social, and climate crises. In this dissertation, I explore the tension created as climate finance practitioners distinguish the green bond market and climate finance from mainstream finance, while simultaneously attempting to shift mainstream finance towards sustainable investment. I analyze the work and activity through which climate finance and the green bond market have come to exist. This work produces green bonds and the green bond market through its components of data, market narrative, time, work, and climate finance people. Anthropologists of finance and markets highlight and trace the embeddedness of market dynamics in politics, society, and history. The anthropology of contemporary financial markets employs two dominant forms of analysis. Science and Technology Studies scholars meticulously document devices and tools used by market participants, while sociocultural anthropologists focus on lived experiences and cultural worlds. In my analysis of the green bond market, I combine both approaches and further the study of financial market mechanisms and market cultural ethos. I breakdown my study of the green bond market into distinct components while connecting these components together through the larger societal dynamics of climate finance and the green bond market. The composite of data, narrative, time, work, and people in the green bond market produces a new ethical field that is contested through explicit discussion on the purpose of financial markets. This ethical field shows financial markets to be a contested and diverse space. Given the outsized role of finance in society, identifying the fissures made possible by climate finance may grow in importance as the climate crisis intensifies.