Showing papers in "Economy and Society in 2016"
TL;DR: The concept of self-tracking has recently begun to emerge in discussions of ways in which people can record specific features of their lives, often using digital technologies, to monitor, evaluate and optimize themselves as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: The concept of self-tracking has recently begun to emerge in discussions of ways in which people can record specific features of their lives, often using digital technologies, to monitor, evaluate and optimize themselves. There is evidence that the personal data that are generated by the digital surveillance of individuals (dataveillance) are now used by a range of actors and agencies in diverse contexts. This paper examines the ‘function creep’ of self-tracking by outlining five modes that have emerged: private, communal, pushed, imposed and exploited. The analysis draws upon theoretical perspectives on concepts of selfhood, citizenship, dataveillance and the global digital data economy in discussing the wider socio-cultural implications of the emergence and development of these modes of self-tracking.
237 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the most ambitious regulation directed at the practice: the algorithm-tagging rule in the German High-Frequency Trading Act, and conclude that sociologists of finance should adopt a more balanced approach when evaluating regulatory technologies and heed MacKenzie's 2005 call to open up their black boxes.
Abstract: In response to the flash crashes and market manipulations blamed on high-frequency trading (HFT), algorithms have been brought inside the regulatory perimeter. This paper focuses on the most ambitious regulation directed at the practice: the algorithm-tagging rule in the German High-Frequency Trading Act. Fifteen interviews with stakeholders in the Act’s implementation serve to reconstruct how regulators defined an algorithm and help pose the question of to what extent regulatory definitions and data need accurately to represent financial practices to be useful. Although tentative in its findings, the research suggests that the algorithm-tagging rule may be providing valuable signals in the noise to trade surveillance officers and having virtuous effects on the cultures of trading firms. The conclusion argues that sociologists of finance should adopt a more balanced approach when evaluating regulatory technologies and heed MacKenzie’s 2005 call to open up their black boxes.
64 citations
TL;DR: How and why the Flash Crash is being invoked as a significant event in debates about high-frequency trading and algo-financial markets is discussed and it is suggested that a key reason why the flash crash is widely discussed is that eventalizations evoke familiar tropes about the fear of technology and theFear of herding.
Abstract: The Flash Crash of 6 May 2010 has an interesting status in discussions of high-frequency trading, i.e. fully automated, superfast computerized trading: it is invoked both as an important illustration of how this field of algorithmic trading operates and, more often, as an example of how fully automated trading algorithms are prone to run amok in unanticipated frenzy. In this paper, I discuss how and why the Flash Crash is being invoked as a significant event in debates about high-frequency trading and algo-financial markets. I analyse the mediatization of the event, as well as the variety of eventalizations of the Flash Crash - the different ways in which the Flash Crash is being mobilized as an illustrative event. I critically discuss the impact often associated with the Flash Crash – and on that basis, inquire into why the event nonetheless attracts so much attention. I suggest that a key reason why the Flash Crash is widely discussed is that eventalizations of 6 May 2010 evoke familiar tropes a...
54 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors provide an analysis of strategic uses of ignorance or not-knowing in one of the most secretive industries within the financial sector and investigate the kinds of imitations that might be produced from structures of not-knowledge.
Abstract: This paper provides an analysis of strategic uses of ignorance or not-knowing in one of the most secretive industries within the financial sector. The focus of the paper is on the relation between imitation and ignorance within the organizational structure of high-frequency trading (HFT) firms. In social studies of finance (SSF) literature imitation is considered a strategic act, i.e. imitation is a term applied when traders copy the strategies of other traders. I wish to turn this relation between ignorance and imitation on its head and consider ignorance itself as a strategic unknown and investigate the kinds of imitations that might be produced from structures of not-knowing (i.e. structures intended to divide, obscure and protect knowledge). This point is illustrated through ethnographic studies and interviews within five HFT firms. The data show how a black-box structure of ignorance is replicated within the organizational setting of these firms and re-enacted by the traders. Towards the end ...
47 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, credit intermediation outside the regular banking system, or shadow banking, has increased immensely over the past decade and the authors situate this increase against the backdrop of the structural p...
Abstract: Credit intermediation outside the regular banking system, or shadow banking, has increased immensely over the past decade. This paper situates this increase against the backdrop of the structural p...
43 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine what arguments drawn from ecological economics might contribute to the discussion of responsible innovation, and ask whether opening the black box of "responsible stagnation" might also open the door for a reasoned discussion about resource consumption and pace of development in over-productive or too-risky sectors and technologies, rather than its opposite.
Abstract: The proponents of responsible innovation (RI) have often opened their discussions with the reassurance that while they are against irresponsible innovation, they are not advocating irresponsible stagnation. In the two-by-two matrix generally used to illustrate this model of innovation, the quadrant for responsible stagnation has so far gone largely unmentioned, let alone explored. This paper draws on existing real-world cases to examine what arguments drawn from ecological economics might contribute to the discussion of RI. It questions the present growth-driven paradigm and asks whether opening the black box of ‘responsible stagnation' might also open the door for a reasoned discussion about resource consumption and pace of development in over-productive or too-risky sectors and technologies, as an intrinsic part of responsible innovation, rather than its opposite.
40 citations
TL;DR: The culture of HFT is introduced as a sociological problem relating to knowledge and practice, raising issues relating to situated knowledge, distributed cognition and action, the assignment of responsibility when regulating high-speed algorithms, their history, organizational structure and, perhaps more fundamentally, their representation.
Abstract: As part of ongoing work to lay a foundation for social studies of high-frequency trading (HFT), this paper introduces the culture(s) of HFT as a sociological problem relating to knowledge and practice. HFT is often discussed as a purely technological development, where all that matters is the speed of allocating, processing and transmitting data. Indeed, the speed at which trades are executed and data transmitted is accelerating, and it is fair to say that algorithms are now the primary interacting agents operating in the financial markets. However, we contend that HFT is first and foremost a cultural phenomenon. More specifically, both individuals and collective agents – such as algorithms – might be considered cultural entities, charged with very different ways of processing information, making sense of it and turning it into knowledge and practice. This raises issues relating to situated knowledge, distributed cognition and action, the assignment of responsibility when regulating high-speed alg...
40 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a comparative analysis of different market actors (regulators, market analysts and traders) shows that the diverse and complex ways in which they access and construct knowledge out of information in fact lead to what I call different epistemic regimes.
Abstract: Calls for greater transparency as well as corporate and individual accountability have emerged in response to the recent turbulence in financial markets. In the field of high-frequency trading (HFT), suggested solutions have involved a call for increased market information, for example, or better access to the inner workings of algorithmic trading systems. Through a combination of fieldwork conducted in HFT firms and discourse analysis, I show that the problem may not always stem from a lack of information. Instead, my comparative analysis of different market actors (regulators, market analysts and traders) shows that the diverse and complex ways in which they access and construct knowledge out of information in fact lead to what I call different epistemic regimes. An understanding of how epistemic regimes work will enable us to explain not only why the same market event can be viewed as very different things – as market manipulation, predation or error – but also why it is so difficult to arrive ...
39 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors highlight the ubiquity of civic-minded everyday forms of prefigurative politics among a subset of young men and young women in north India and identify the energetic attempts of young people within and beyond India to engage in social action, providing a counterpoint to negative stereotypes of youth circulating in the media and some scholarly circles.
Abstract: This paper focuses on ‘prefigurative politics’ – embodying in the present one's vision of the future – among young people in north India. In so doing it contributes to wider debates on oppositional politics, temporality, India and youth. Building on recent fieldwork in Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, we highlight the ubiquity of civic-minded everyday forms of prefigurative politics among a subset of young men and young women. We examine the temporality of this politics, which, like other recent prefigurative action across the world, emphasizes acting in the present. Young people in north India tend to view the future not as a point on the horizon but as the precipitate of their daily activities. By identifying the energetic attempts of young people within and beyond India to engage in social action, we also provide a counterpoint to negative stereotypes of youth circulating in the media and some scholarly circles.
36 citations
Abstract: The practices of high-frequency trading (HFT) are dependent on automated financial markets, especially those produced by securities exchanges electronically interconnected with competing exchanges. How did this infrastructural and organizational state of affairs come to be? Employing the conceptual distinction between fixed-role and switch-role markets, we analyse the discourse surrounding the design and eventual approval of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Regulation of Exchanges and Alternative Trading Systems (Reg ATS). We find that the disruption of the exchange industry at the hands of automated markets was produced through an interweaving of both technological and political change. This processual redefinition of the ‘exchange’, in addition, may provide a suggestive precedent for understanding contemporary regulatory crises generated by other digital marketplace platforms.
24 citations
TL;DR: The findings show that, through a process of ‘abstracting’, purification and translation are kept strictly separate, allowing the broker to meet the regulatory requirements de jure whilst retaining de facto the unregulated advantages of high-speed materiality.
Abstract: We examine the sociomaterial regulation of algorithmic trading against the background of the European Union’s directives on Markets in Financial Instruments (MiFID/MiFIR). Tracing the purification and translation of regulatory practices within a French brokerage firm, we examine the impact of electronic trading on the nature of market access. Central to our analysis is the ‘Blackbox’, a tool designed to manage market access efficiently by collating trade flows and automatically pairing them with trading algorithms. Our findings show that, through a process of ‘abstracting’, purification and translation are kept strictly separate, allowing the broker to meet the regulatory requirements de jure whilst retaining de facto the unregulated advantages of high-speed materiality. We discuss the implications for both the policy and practice of high-speed financial trading.
TL;DR: The authors compare and contrast two related, but in many ways also differing, ways of thinking about totalitarianism and its legal repercussions, and argue that the maieutic impulsiveness of these two works can be traced back to the attempt to create a new language for politics after the cataclysm of the twentieth century, and Greif has called the new ‘maieutic discourse of re-enlightenment in the age of the crisis of man.
Abstract: We locate Arendt’s and Shklar’s writings within what Katznelson has identified as an attempt to create a new language for politics after the cataclysm of the twentieth century, and Greif has called the new ‘maieutic’ discourse of ‘re-enlightenment’ in the ‘age of the crisis of man’. More specifically, we compare and contrast two related, but in many ways also differing, ways of thinking about totalitarianism and its legal repercussions. To this end, we examine two sets of studies: Arendt’s The origins of totalitarianism and Eichmann in Jerusalem: A report on the banality of evil and Shklar’s After utopia: The decline of political faith and Legalism: An essay on law, morals, and politics. While The origins of totalitarianism and After utopia discussed totalitarian ideology and its consequences for modern political thought, the Eichmann report and Legalism dealt with the question of whether and how justice is possible after the extreme experience of totalitarianism. We argue that the maieutic impuls...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyse the logic underpinning austerity governance in the United Kingdom and argue that the direction of travel towards an imagined debt-free future is just as important as reaching the destination itself under the logic of anticipatory fiscal consolidation.
Abstract: This paper analyses the logic underpinning austerity governance in the United Kingdom. Taking the UK’s relative fiscal and monetary policy autonomy as a starting point, the paper unpacks and analyses how the United Kingdom has charted a successful course between the imperatives of social stability and market credibility. At the heart of this ‘success’ is a fundamentally anticipatory governing logic. Fiscal consolidation was justified and enacted as a pre-emptive and preventative intervention in order to anticipate an indebted and thus disciplined future. Contrary to conventional wisdom, then, UK austerity is not necessarily geared only towards swingeing spending cuts, because the direction of travel towards an imagined debt- and deficit-free future is just as important as reaching the destination itself under the logic of anticipatory fiscal consolidation.
TL;DR: The authors developed a theory of China's financial reform as the management of socio-economic uncertainty by the CCP and showed that the financial system has formed a locus of the CCP's capacity both to manage and to propagate socioeconomic uncertainty through the path of reform.
Abstract: China's financially repressed economy remains characterized by a distinctly resilient political structure (the Chinese Communist Party, CCP) that penetrates both increasingly rational ‘private’ (market) and ‘public’ (state) organizations. How are we to understand the financial system's role in this persistently illiberal yet marketizing political economy? This paper develops a theory of China's financial reform as the management of socio-economic uncertainty by the CCP. Since the early 1990s, the financial system has formed a locus of the CCP's capacity both to manage and to propagate socio-economic uncertainty through the path of reform. The unique path of financial reform in China should thus not be viewed solely in terms of ‘partial’ or ‘failed’ free-market reform, but rather as the product of a more concerted vision of how the financial system enabled a mode of economic growth that combined the drive for accumulation of capital with the distinctive legacies of China's post-1989 socio-political...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the effort to re-embed the corporate entity by making it subject to noneconomic claims expands the scope of corporate personhood and that doing so within extant power relations of the firm opens the door to alternative projects that undermine the benefit corporation movement's goal of fostering corporate social responsibility.
Abstract: Benefit corporations are a new type of corporate entity developed to remedy antisocial corporate behaviour by enabling mission-driven investors, managers and entrepreneurs to prioritize social values and contest the idea that profits are the only and best measure of corporate performance. To resocialize the corporate entity, the benefit corporation movement built enabling discourses and evaluation practices into the dominant model of corporate governance, shareholder value ideology. These discourses and practices expand both the purpose of the corporate entity and shareholders’ power to enforce that purpose. However, this paper argues that the effort to ‘re-embed’ the corporate entity by making it subject to non-economic claims expands the scope of corporate personhood and that doing so within extant power relations of the firm opens the door to alternative projects that undermine the benefit corporation movement's goal of fostering corporate social responsibility.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyzed the case of post-default Argentina since 2001, and analyzed how the country has been trapped in a cycle of debt dependency, which can only be interrupted by a comprehensive audit of the debt's legitimacy followed by debt cancellation.
Abstract: A global neoliberal architecture has enabled many countries to increase their public debts to meet their fiscal needs. But since 2008 a number of European and North American economies have faced financial crises induced by unsustainable debts. This paper analyses the case of post-default Argentina since 2001, so as to better comprehend the political economy of public debt, especially in cases where governments are elected on anti-austerity platforms. Presidents Nestor and Cristina Kirchner were committed to a debt-reduction policy, yet Argentina faced a new, ‘selective’, default in 2014. This paper analyses how the country has been trapped in a cycle of debt dependency, which can only be interrupted by a comprehensive audit of the debt’s legitimacy followed by debt cancellation. Critical lessons are provided for other countries facing similar situations.
TL;DR: In this paper, a framework referred to as the "corporate reconstruction of European capitalism theory of integration" is used to analyse the European Union's response to the Eurozone crisis, arguing that corporate preferences adapted and now favored fiscal liability pooling and ultimately the setting up of a fiscal union.
Abstract: This paper uses a framework referred to as the ‘corporate reconstruction of European capitalism theory of integration’ to analyse the European Union’s response to the Eurozone crisis. Most political economy analyses of the Eurozone crisis have focused on political leaders, clashes between creditor and debtor member states and public opinions in analysing the handling of the crisis. This paper focuses instead on the input of corporate actors. It is argued that both the setting up of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the handling of its crisis were congenial to corporate preferences. Europe’s nascent corporate elite was concerned with eliminating currency risk when the EMU was set up and therefore did not push for fiscal federalism. When the flawed architecture of the Eurozone transformed that currency risk into sovereign credit risk, corporate preferences adapted and now favoured fiscal liability pooling and ultimately the setting up of a fiscal union.
TL;DR: The WIR money as discussed by the authors is a local money that has been in existence in Switzerland since the 1930s and provides a shield against crises for two significant and connected reasons: from a "horizontal" perspective, the WIR is a coherent economic, as well as social, project that relies on the "melting money" principle.
Abstract: As a result of the current financial crisis, economists have paid increased attention to local monies designed in an effort to create a new kind of economy, as well as new ways to develop social links. This paper seeks to shed light on the WIR money, a local money that has been in existence in Switzerland since the 1930s. We argue that it provides a shield against crises for two significant and connected reasons. First, from a ‘horizontal’ perspective, the WIR is a coherent economic, as well as social, project that relies on the ‘melting money’ principle. Second, from a ‘vertical’ perspective, it is based on a banking model that is anchored to a specific ‘attitude’ designed to manage the monetary common good. The mix between these ‘horizontal’ and ‘vertical’ perspectives is likely to be insightful for other projects like the WIR.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors focus on the legal form, technicalities, and legislative drafting of the Qualifying Period (QF) regulations in UK law and examine the effect of QF on family-friendly employment rights.
Abstract: This paper aims to bring an appreciation of legal form, technicalities, and legislative drafting to growing interdisciplinary literatures on time and governance. Scholarship across politics, geography, science studies and anthropology continues to trace the productive force and specific qualities of diverse temporal horizons. At the same time socio-legal scholars increasingly focus on the work of making and negotiating law, engaging with the dogged, everyday work of legal experts and bureaucrats. Yet little attention has been paid, to date, to the work of legislative drafters. This paper follows the ‘legal lives’ of qualifying periods on family-friendly employment rights. As examples of legal technicalities that work with time, qualifying periods form an important part of the regulatory structure that separates precarious workers from ‘regular’ employees in UK law. Drawing on documentary research and interviews with policy experts, union activists and legislative drafters, this paper focuses on th...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors analyze the changing temporal and spatial orientation of economic valuations in increasingly digitalized economies, in which markets can no longer be understood as locally bound and closed sites of valuation and exchange.
Abstract: How do market actors in the contemporary economy make decisions when they are uncertain of the value of what is being traded? To answer this question, this paper analyses the changing temporal and spatial orientation of economic valuations in increasingly digitalized economies, in which markets can no longer be understood as locally bound and closed sites of valuation and exchange. Drawing on ethnographic material from the fishing industry, the paper shows how digital tracking technologies link and synchronize auction markets with real-time information on fishing activities. Hence, ‘scopic media’ such as chart plotters and computer screens are not only deployed by skippers to monitor one another, but are also used as valuation devices that recontextualize local knowledge for the purpose of coping with economic uncertainty. As a consequence of this panoptic valuation regime, fishermen control their virtual identities by disciplining harvesting practices according to their buyers’ expectations.
TL;DR: In this article, a socio-technical analysis of derivatives by offering an infrastructural explanation of divergent outcomes on two early American futures markets is presented. But, despite the formal similarity of these systems, their contrasting implementation produced classifications with dissimilar semiotic qualities.
Abstract: This paper contributes to a socio-technical analysis of derivatives by offering an infrastructural explanation of divergent outcomes on two early American futures markets. It takes as the starting-point of analysis the classification systems by which these futures markets were constitutively linked to underlying markets in agricultural commodities. Despite the formal similarity of these systems, their contrasting implementation – i.e. how grading was accomplished and integrated into practice – produced classifications with dissimilar semiotic qualities. This semiotic distinction is shown to have promoted divergent economic behaviours and outcomes on the two markets: high-risk speculation and volatility on the Chicago Board of Trade, low-risk hedging and stability on the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. The paper thus argues that treating classifications in their semiotic capacity yields an analysis that can connect foundational infrastructures and market-level outcomes in meaningful, non-deterministic...
TL;DR: It is impossible to think of another scholar writing in English today who can equal Keith Tribe for his mastery of such a wide range of sources in the history of economic thought.
Abstract: It is impossible to think of another scholar writing in English today who can equal Keith Tribe for his mastery of such a wide range of sources in the history of economic thought.1 In The economy o...
TL;DR: The critical reception of classical political arrangements in early and then modern European political culture demonstrates two things: 1) the importance of the classical political arrangement and 2) its importance in the development of modern political culture.
Abstract: Wilfried Nippel’s study of the critical reception of classical political arrangements – above all of ancient Athenian democracy – in early and then modern European political culture demonstrates tw...