The paper develops a sympathetic geographical critique of the concept of financialization which seeks to account for the growing influence of financial markets over the unfolding of economy, polity and society. Processes of financialization are claimed to be manifest at a number of scales, from higher levels of instability within the economy as a whole, through pressure exerted on corporations by capital markets, to the equity effects of the financial system on individuals and households. In seeking to explain change within contemporary society, financialization has circulated less widely than similar and related concepts such as neoliberalization. While financialization has the potential to unite researchers across cognate social science fields, thereby building critical mass and recognition within social studies of money and finance, we argue that research has been insufficiently attentive to space and place, both in terms of processes and effects. Financialization is a profoundly spatial phenomenon, representing as it does the search for a spatial-temporal fix, or quasi-resolution of the crisis tendencies of contemporary capitalism. The paper explores a number of possibly fruitful directions for work on financialization, focusing in particular on the idea of financial ecologies.

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Financializing space, spacing financialization:

We provide here a complement to recent work on family business, which has demonstrated the need to go beyond the generic definition of the family firm to place personal capitalism in an appropriate institutional, historical, and cultural framework. By focusing on the nineteenth‐ and twentieth‐century experiences in Britain, Spain, and Italy, we challenge the notion that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries there was anything so simple as a Mediterranean model for family business. Rather, we demonstrate the need to consider family businesses in national and regional contexts if we are to understand their various capabilities and characteristics. We use similarities and differences in the experiences and responses of families and firms in the three countries to support this claim.

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National determinants of family firm development? Family firms in Britain, Spain and Italy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

Taxation in West Africa: transforming the colonial subject into the “governable person”

A Companion to Europe Since 1945 provides a stimulating guide to numerous important developments which have influenced the political, economic, social, and cultural character of Europe during and since the Cold War.

	
		Includes 22 original essays by an international team of expert scholars
	
		Examines the social, intellectual, economic, cultural, and political changes that took place throughout Europe in the Cold War and Post Cold War periods
	
		Discusses a wide range of topics including the Single Market, European-American relations, family life and employment, globalization, consumption, political parties, European decolonization, European identity, security and defence policies, and Europe's fight against international terrorism
	
		Presents Europe in a broad geographical conception, to give equal weighting to developments in the Eastern and Western European states

A Companion to Europe since 1945

The Great Depression reached a turning point in the currency crises of 1931, and the German banking and currency crisis was a critical event whose causes are still debated We demonstrate in this paper that the crisis was primarily domestic in origin; that it was a currency crisis rather than a banking crisis; and that the failure was more political than economic German banks failed in 1931, but the problem was not primarily with them Instead, the crisis was a failure of political will in a time of turmoil that induced a currency crisis

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Made in Germany: The German currency crisis of July 1931

British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction

Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the British Overseas Empire, 1688–1775: Bowen, H. V.: New York: St. Martin's Press, 257 pp., Publication Date: October 1996

Bargaining on Europe: Britain and the First Common Market, 1860–1892: Marsh, Peter T.: New Haven: Yale University Press, 246 pp., Publication Date: February 2000

Trevor Lloyd

Papers

British Imperialism: Crisis and Deconstruction

Elites, Enterprise and the Making of the British Overseas Empire, 1688–1775: Bowen, H. V.: New York: St. Martin's Press, 257 pp., Publication Date: October 1996

Bargaining on Europe: Britain and the First Common Market, 1860–1892: Marsh, Peter T.: New Haven: Yale University Press, 246 pp., Publication Date: February 2000