Impact Hau

IMPACT HAU is a comparative anthropological study of impact investing and sustainable finance. Inspired by Marcel Mauss’s classic use of the Maori concept of hau, the ‘spirit of the gift’, it focuses on the designers, traders and beneficiaries of impact bonds to produce an empirically driven analysis of the multiple moralities of global finance.
Ethnographic case studies compiled by our researchers provide grounded, detailed accounts of the design and implementation of impact investing in Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas. In this research, we analyze the current consensus among global policymakers and business leaders concerning the role of finance in solving global problems, and we test the theories of sustainability that underpin hopes for a socially inclusive green economy.