The connecting tissue of this website is the notion of institutional landscapes. It refers to those parts of the human and non-human world that have become transformed into a financial asset, a property that yields an income stream and that can be resold in the future, as part of portfolio considerations of institutional investors. These, in turn, serve the needs of the more privileged ones in society. In other words, institutional landscapes are an expression of the expansion of a “global return society”, in which the reproduction of the better-off people of the Global North (and, increasingly, the Global South) has become tied to the reproduction of finance capital, both “at home” and abroad. Often the roots of this capital lead right back into the “middle of society”.
(Ouma 2020: 3-5)