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Centre for Rising Powers

 

The Faith and Markets (FAM) programme's inter-disciplinary research and outreach activity focuses on the convergence of the rise of entrepreneurship and the rise of religion in developing and emerging economies in order to understand better its potential to promote human and environmental well-being. The role of economic factors in the making of rising powers is well known;  less well understood are the moral and spiritual visions, the cognitive frameworks and the institutional logics that underpin emerging markets, entrepreneurial business and politics. Religion and business are both in need of greater exploration in international studies, and to focus on their role in rising powers turns a new lens on this increasingly important field.

FAM’s research stream, in collaboration with other CRP projects, stands to make a significant contribution to CRP’s leading role in fostering global and international understanding of two crucial issues: what constitutes a rising power, and what are the key levers in stimulating and sustaining the rise? FAM will contribute to these questions by interrogating their historical, institutional and policy dimensions, focusing on such issues as:

  • the transnational circulation of ideas, institutions, laws, beliefs, and expertise;
  • the practice of entrepreneurship, capitalism, state sovereignty, pluralism and governance;
  • the functioning of bureaucracy, inter-agency and market relations;
  • the spread of networks of knowledge, learning, faith and authority;
  • the building of institutional, relational, moral and spiritual capital;
  • the securing of human and environmental flourishing

To such issues FAM brings a particular interest in historical and contemporary relationships between systems of belief and the operations of capitalism, trade and exchange. It will stimulate an exploration of faith in markets, faith and markets, and markets in faith, across multiple contexts and scales, and in historical and contemporary perspective.