Anette Nyqvist
Anette Nyqvist

About the project

Anette Nyqvist will investigate the ideas, practices and processes of global economic forecasting and scenario making. Economic forecasting is the process of attempting to predict the economic future for anything from a household or company-level to entire nations and the global economy. Global economic forecasting in combination with the creation of so-called alternative scenarios has become an increasingly important policy- and decision-making tool for corporations and governments as they formulate economic policy.

The aim of this study is to gain detailed knowledge of the professionals, ideas and practices involved in global financial forecasting and scenario making. The project seeks to answer questions such as: Who are the main actors involved in the forecasting and scenario making processes? What are the practices, tools, models, ideas and underlying assumptions pertinent to economic forecasters and scenario makers? What type of knowledge is generated and how is this knowledge presented and diffused?

Nyqvist will conduct ethnographic fieldwork, consisting of participant observation and qualitative interviews, among a team of economic forecasters at an organization whose global economic forecasts have significant legitimacy and prevalence. July 1, 2016 is the starting date for this project. Nyqvist plans to begin the ethnographic fieldwork for the study during 2017.

Short biography

Anette Nyqvist is associate professor of Social Anthropology at the Department of Social Anthropology and the multi-disciplinary research center Score (Stockholm center for organizational research), both at Stockholm University.

Nyqvist’s research interests are focused at the nexus of statecraft and market-making. Her contributions within the Anthropology of Organizations and the Anthropology of Policy are noted in volumes such as the Swedish monograph Ombudskapitalisterna. Institutionella ägares röst och roll (Liber, 2015), Organisational Anthropology: Doing Ethnography in and Among Complex Organizations (with Professor Christina Garsten for Pluto Press, 2013), and the recently pubished monograph Reform and Responsibility in the Remaking of the Swedish National Pension System. Opening the Orange Envelope (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

Nyqvist’s own ongoing research project, funded by the Swedish Research Council, investigates what some of the world’s largest institutional investor organizations do as engaged actors within the field of RI (responsible investing). The project The Do-gooders of global finance. An ethnographic inquiry into what pension capital does – and does not do focuses on the so-called responsible investment practices and processes of the large American pension funds.

Selected publications

Monographs

2020

The Shimmer and Shade of Gold. Stockholm: Max Ström förlag.

Guld – dess dunkla glans. [translation] Stockholm: Max Ström förlag.

2016

Reform and Responsibility in the Remaking of the Swedish National Pension System. Opening the Orange Envelope. New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan Books.

2015

Ombudskapitalisterna. Institutionella ägares röst och roll. Stockholm: Liber.

2008

Opening the Orange Envelope. Reform and Responsibility in the Remaking of the Swedish National Pension System, dissertation. Stockholm Studies in Social Anthropology 64. Stockholm: Stockholm University.

Peer-reviewed articles

2015

Insecurity in an Orange Envelope. Implications of a Reformed National Pension System in Sweden. PoLAR, Journal of Political and Legal Anthropology, 38(2): 265-278.

The Corporation Performed. Minutes from the Rituals of Annual General Meetings. Journal of Organizational Ethnography, 4(3): 341-355.

Anthologies

2017

Ethnographies of Conferences and Trade Fairs. Shaping Industries, Creating Professionals. (co-edited with Hege Høyer Leivestad) New York, NY: Palgrave Macmillan Books. 

2013

Organisational Anthropology: Doing Ethnography in and among Complex Organisations (with Christina Garsten). London: Pluto Press.

Chapters in anthologies

2017

Scheduled schmoozing: Notes on interludal practices at responsible investors’ conferences. In: Ethnographies of Conferences and Trade Fairs. Høyer Leivestad H. and A. Nyqvist, eds. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Talking like an institutional investor: on the gentle voices of finanical giants, in Power, Policy, and Profit. Corporate Engagement in Politics and Government. eds. C. Garsten and A. Sörbom. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar Publishing.

Individuals and Industries: Large-Scale Professional Gatherings as Ethnographic Fields (with Hege Høyer Leivestad and Hans Tunestad), in Ethnographies of Conferences and Trade Fairs. Shaping Industries, Creating Professionals, eds. H Høyer Leivestad and A. Nyqvist. NY: Palgrave MacMillan Books.

2016

Talking Like an Institutional Investor. On the Gentle Voice of Financial Giants, in Politics and the Corporate World, eds. C. Garsten and A. Sörbom. Cheltenham, MA: Edward Elgar. (in production).

2014

Polarization and Convergence of Values at the Intermediary Position (with R. Thedvall), in Market Values: Configuring values, organizing markets, eds. S. Alexius and K. Tamm Hallström. Cheltenham, MA: Edward Elgar.

2013

Access to all stages? Studying through policy in a culture of accessibility, in Organisational Anthropology: Doing Anthropology in and among Complex Organisations, eds. C. Garsten and A. Nyqvist. London: Pluto Press.

Entries. Engaging organisational worlds (with C. Garsten), in Organisational Anthropology: Doing Anthropology in and among Complex Organisations, eds. C. Garsten and A. Nyqvist. London: Pluto Press.

Momentum. Pushing ethnography ahead (with C. Garsten), in Organisational Anthropology: Doing Anthropology in and among Complex Organisations, eds. C. Garsten and A. Nyqvist. London: Pluto Press.

2011

Sweden’s National Pension System as a Political Technology, in Policy Worlds: Anthropology and the Analysis of Contemporary Power, eds. C. Shore, S. Wright and D. Peró. New York: Berghahn books.

2007

Inuti det orange kuvertet, in Mellan folkbildning och fondrådgivning. Nya perspektiv på pensionssystemet, ed. U. Lundberg. Stockholm: Institute for Future Studies.