“Dream brokers” and the moral economy of frontier investments

• Investments in land-use frontiers are morally fraught due to their social and ecological impacts. • Frontier investors ease these moral tensions by mobilizing narratives about frontier land-use change and their role in it. • Narratives downplay moral costs & upsell benefits of investments, while portraying investors as agents of positive change. • Brokers who help investors navigate material dimensions of frontiers also actively shape and disseminate these narratives. • That discursive work is an important way in which brokers contribute to bringing about the “dream” of frontier development. Agricultural frontiers continue to expand rapidly in multiple parts of the world, with massive social and ecological consequences. As awareness of these issues rises, so does societal pressure on frontier investors, who find themselves under increased scrutiny from civil society and environmental groups. In this study, we argue that frontier actors, in response to these pressures, deploy narratives that seek to resolve moral tensions around their activities in an attempt both to lessen exposure to criticism and to appease their own moral insecurities. Through a re-analysis of interviews conducted between 2013 and 2018 in two land-use frontier settings, the Gran Chaco region in South America and Niassa province in Mozambique, we explore the narratives used by frontier investors to frame and justify their actions as rightful and appropriate. We also highlight the important role played in this process by brokers who, in addition to facilitating these investments materially, operate at the discursive level to fashion these narratives into a positive, socially acceptable vision of frontier development. In disseminating the carefully curated “dream” of a morally just frontier, brokers pre-empt critiques of frontier investments and help bring about the future they want.