The Geographies of Social Finance: Poverty Regulation Through the ‘invisible Heart’ of Markets

This article critically examines the emerging field of social finance, arguing that it represents a form of poverty regulation embedded within financialised capitalism. It proposes that social finance reframes private profit-making as a force for public good, attempting to resolve capitalism’s inherent contradictions from within. The paper outlines a typology of social finance forms and suggests a geographical research agenda, emphasizing that practitioners’ simplistic geographical framings obscure the complex spatial dynamics constituting this emerging financial marketplace and its logic of poverty regulation.