Rosenhek Zeev

Rosenhek Zeev is a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Political Science and Communication at Open University of Israel. His main research interests lie in political economy and economic sociology, with a particular focus on processes of institutional change in state–economy relations. He has conducted extensive research on the political economy of the welfare state, labour migration, and the politics surrounding the institutionalisation of the neoliberal regime in Israel.

In recent years, his research has focused on the relationships between the political-economic and cultural dimensions of financialisation across diverse social fields.

The project

Title: The Financial Valuation of Social Values: Imaginaries, Conventions and Devices in Socially Sustainable Investing

"The research seeks to examine the institutional and socio-technical infrastructure that underpins socially sustainable investing (SSI), a global field of financial activity characterised by the systematic inclusion of non-financial concerns and factors related to specific social values within profit-oriented investment practices and products.

At the conceptual level, SSI is approached as a field constituted by the explicit interweaving of two distinct orders of worth, usually regarded as belonging to separate — if not antagonistic — spheres of social life: the civic order of worth and a financialised version of the market order of worth. In principle, a condition of incommensurability exists between these two orders, generating evaluative uncertainty.

The main objective of the study is to open the socio-technical “black box” that produces commensurability, by analysing how the financial valuation of social values is materialised in concrete SSI financial products. The analysis focuses on three types of institutional actors that play key roles in constructing, maintaining and operating the SSI market infrastructure: multilateral organisations that formulate principles, goals and standards while promoting the development of the SSI market; data providers that produce market devices such as ratings, rankings and indices; and asset management firms that design and commercialise SSI financial products."

Hosting Institution: Sciences Po

Selective Bibliography

• Maman, Daniel and Zeev Rosenhek. 2023. "Governing Individuals' Imaginaries and Conduct in Personal Finance: The Mobilization of Emotions in Financial Education." Journal of Consumer Culture, 23(1): 188–208.
• Mandelkern, Ronen and Zeev Rosenhek. 2022. "The Politics of Welfare State Financialisation: The Case of Israel’s 'Saving for Every Child' Programme." Critical Policy Studies, 16(1): 60–78.
• Fisher, Eran and Zeev Rosenhek. 2022. "Engendering Assemblages: The Constitution of Digital Health Data as an Epistemic Consumption Object." Journal of Cultural Economy, 15(5): 599–616.
• Maman, Daniel and Zeev Rosenhek. 2020. "Facing Future Uncertainties and Risks through Personal Finance: Conventions in Financial Education." Journal of Cultural Economy, 13(3): 303–317.
• Maman, Daniel and Zeev Rosenhek. 2019. "Responsibility, Planning and Risk Management: Moralizing Everyday Finance through Financial Education." The British Journal of Sociology, 70(5): 1996–2019.