Anette Nyqvist

Reform and Responsibility in the Remaking of the Swedish National Pension System : Opening the Orange Envelope

1. Insecurity as Incentive in Social Security Policy 2. The Politics of Pensions 3. The Swedish Reform-A Radical Compromise 4. The Technological Relocation of Responsibility 5. Governance Through an Orange Messenger 6. Voices of the Governed 7. Orange Agency and Insecurity

Ethnographies of Conferences and Trade Fairs

This anthology is an attempt to make sense of conferences and trade fairs as phenomena in contemporary society. The authors describe how these large-scale professional gatherings have become key si ...

Scheduled schmoozing : Notes on interludal practices at responsible investors' conferences

Anette Nyqvist analyzes responsible investment conferences as important meeting grounds for institutional investors, such as pension funds, mutual funds and insurance companies. At responsible investment conferences institutional investors not only seek new knowledge about the responsible investment industry, but they also look for opportunities for collaboration. Based on fieldwork conducted in New York and Paris this chapter deals with increased importance of socializing at industry conferences. It sheds light on the practice of networking and shows how this activity is now recognized as significant and organized elements of the industry conference, equal to the paper presentation or panel discussion.

The corporation performed: minutes from the rituals of annual general meetings

Purpose – In this paper the annual general meetings (AGM) of corporations are conceptualized as front-stage performances and dramas where the three roles of the corporation – the shareholder, manager and director – perform the corporation as a particular type of organization. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – Meeting ethnography conducted at four seasons of AGMs in Sweden. Findings – The study sheds light on how the required AGM of public companies may be seen as a ritualized, legitimizing and trust-building corporate performance where the different roles of the corporation are played out in positioning procedures and where the corporation as an organizational form is enacted. Originality/value – The topic is of this paper is clearly original. Looking at corporations from an anthropological angle, exploring foundation myths, rites and organizational cultures, have been employed earlier, but exploring AGMs from an anthropological angle, is new.

Individuals and Industries: Large-Scale Professional Gatherings as Ethnographic Fields

Conferences and trade fairs have during the past decades become a significant global industry in and of itself. Here the authors of this volume claim that such large-scale professional gatherings have become key sites for the making and negotiation of both industries and professions. The anthology is an attempt to make sense of conferences and trade fairs as phenomena in contemporary society. Large-scale professional gatherings are here understood as organized and particular events, bound by place and time, where a large number of professionals within defined industries assemble to network and to exchange information.