Committed capitalism

Abstract

This article presents contributions from pragmatic sociology to the debate on the commitment of economic actors to socio-environmental causes. Given the controversy about the achievements of their engagement, we propose the notion of committed capitalism and seek to understand it through the moral ground of its critiques, defenses and the construction of its normativity. We aim to emphasize two dimensions observed in contemporary capitalism: the declared commitment to a cause and the efforts of actors to stabilize a compromise among distinct orders of worth (market, industrial, and civic) and create devices that actualize it in the world. Drawing on a textual corpus of Brazilian newspapers, we examine the interplay of critiques of corporate social responsibility, corporate sustainability, and social finance, as well as their responses. As a result, we present a framework of internal and external critiques of the compromise that allow us to understand the contours of the moral dimension that underpins some crucial aspects of contemporary capitalism.