Take an issue: cultural economy and finance
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the preparation of key areas of modern finance and demonstrate the productiveness of opening finance to a range of interdisciplinary inquiry to show how finance works and how debates about finance might be productively progressed.
Abstract: Present-day capitalism is increasingly financial in character. At nearly every turn, finance and practices of financialization have begun to work their way into most areas of everyday life. The papers gathered together in this special section under the umbrella term ‘cultural economy of finance’ seek to explore the preparation of key areas of modern finance. In doing so, they demonstrate the productiveness of opening finance to a range of interdisciplinary inquiry to show how finance works and how debates about finance might be productively progressed.
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TL;DR: The authors examines the specific mechanisms that have allowed global financial markets to penetrate deeply into the activities of U.S. cities and follows the case of Chicago from 1996 through 2007 as the city government subsidized development projects with borrowed money using a once-obscure instrument called Tax Increment Financing (TIF).
Abstract: This article examines the specific mechanisms that have allowed global financial markets to penetrate deeply into the activities of U.S. cities. A flood of yield-seeking capital poured into municipal debt instruments in the late 1990s, but not all cities or instruments were equally successful in attracting it. Capital gravitated toward those local governments that could readily convert the income streams of public assets into new financial instruments and that could minimize the risk of nonpayment due to the actions of nonfinancial claimants. This article follows the case of Chicago from 1996 through 2007 as the city government subsidized development projects with borrowed money using a once-obscure instrument called Tax Increment Financing (TIF). TIF allows municipalities to bundle and sell off the rights to future property tax revenues from designated parts of the city. The City of Chicago improved the appearance of these speculative instruments by segmenting and sequencing TIF debt instruments in ways that made them look less idiosyncratic and by exerting strong political control over the processes of development and property tax assessment. In doing so, Chicago not only attracted billions of dollars in global capital but also contributed to a dangerous oversupply of commercial real estate.
331 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors distinguish three heterodox approaches: socioeconomics, political economy, and cultural economists, arguing that the abstract market model is performative and not performative.
Abstract: Although markets are at centre stage in capitalist processes of circulation and exchange, they have rarely been made an object of study. In this paper we distinguish three heterodox approaches. (1) Socioeconomics points out that concrete markets cannot be separated from their social context. Markets are dissolved in social networks and socialized. (2) Political economy investigates how the market model is confused for real markets by market participants. The market is represented as a destructive force. (3) Cultural economists point to the practical self-realization of economic knowledge and argue that the abstract market model is performative.
188 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the growing interest in financial subjects within economic geography and the wider social sciences, and locate this literature within work on financialization and financialization, respectively.
Abstract: In this report, I examine the growing interest in financial subjects within economic geography and the wider social sciences. I begin by locating this literature within work on financialization and...
164 citations
TL;DR: The crisis gripping financial markets in late 2008 had brought about multiple bank failures, both investment and commercial, in the USA and Europe, as well as insolvency of the insurance giant AIG.
Abstract: The crisis gripping financial markets in late 2008 had brought about multiple bank failures, both investment and commercial, in the USA and Europe, as well as insolvency of the insurance giant AIG ...
149 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that the current subprime mortgage crisis is understood in critical terms as a moment when the contradictions of these risk devices and their incapacity to capture the uncertain future have come to the surface, and agency in sub-prime lending has been disassembled.
Abstract: Developing cultural economists’ concerns with the assembly of agency in financial markets, agency in sub-prime mortgage lending in the United States is shown to have been made up through calculative devices of risk. Credit reporting and scoring provided for the targeting, sorting, pricing and governing of customers in terms of risk. The securitization of mortgages into risk-structured financial instruments made possible extended lending. Interest-only adjustable rate mortgage products called up mortgagors who, as leveraged investors, embraced risk in a rising property market. The current sub-prime mortgage crisis is understood in critical terms as a moment when the contradictions of these risk devices and their incapacity to capture the uncertain future have come to the surface, and agency in sub-prime lending has been disassembled. Cultural economy is thus shown to make a distinctive contribution to the politicization of sub-prime that stresses the ambiguous politics of calculation.
126 citations
Cites background from "Take an issue: cultural economy and..."
...Therefore, attention has also focused, for instance, on the screened representation of contemporary finance through computer terminals and software programs (Knorr-Cetina, 2003; Pryke, 2007), or the stock ticker as the first custom-tailored technology adopted in financial markets (Preda, 2006)....
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...In the assembly of agency in financial market networks, however, the issue is often how the representations and models of ‘mathematized finance’ come into operation (Pryke, 2007, p. 577)....
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References
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TL;DR: For example, the authors argues that culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values toward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or "tool kit" of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct "strategies of action."
Abstract: Culture influences action not by providing the ultimate values toward which action is oriented, but by shaping a repertoire or "tool kit" of habits, skills, and styles from which people construct "strategies of action." Two models of cultural influence are developed, for settled and unsettled cultural periods. In settled periods, culture independently influences action, but only by providing resources from which people can construct diverse lines of action. In unsettled cultural periods, explicit ideologies directly govern action, but structural opportunities for action determine which among competing ideologies survive in the long run. This alternative view of culture offers new opportunities for systematic, differentiated arguments about culture's causal role in shaping action. The reigning model used to understand culture's effects on action is fundamentally misleading. It assumes that culture shapes action by supplying ultimate ends or values toward which action is directed, thus making values the central causal element of culture. This paper analyzes the conceptual difficulties into which this traditional view of culture leads and offers an alternative model. Among sociologists and anthropologists, debate has raged for several academic generations over defining the term "culture." Since the seminal work of Clifford Geertz (1973a), the older definition of culture as the entire way of life of a people, including their technology and material artifacts, or that (associated with the name of Ward Goodenough) as everything one would need to know to become a functioning member of a society, have been displaced in favor of defining culture as the publicly available symbolic forms through which people experience and express meaning (see Keesing, 1974). For purposes of this paper, culture consists of such symbolic vehicles of meaning, including beliefs, ritual practices, art forms, and ceremonies, as well as informal cultural practices such as language, gossip, stories, and rituals of daily life. These symbolic forms are the means through which "social processes of sharing modes of behavior and outlook within [a] community" (Hannerz, 1969:184) take place.
6,869 citations
"Take an issue: cultural economy and..." refers background in this paper
...1 This is not, of course, to suggest that these approaches have nothing say about culture (see Zelizer 2002; Spillman 1999; Swedberg 2004; DiMaggio 1994; Swidler 1986)....
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Book•
28 Nov 2004TL;DR: A history of weediness can be found in this paper, where the authors discuss the frontiers of capitalism, the economy of appearances, knowledge, and freedom in Borneo.
Abstract: Preface ix Introduction 1 PART I: Prosperity "Better you had brought me a bomb, so I could blow this place up" 21 Chapter 1: Frontiers of Capitalism 27 "They communicate only in sign language" 51 Chapter 2: The Economy of Appearances 55 PART II: Knowledge "Let a new Asia and a new Africa be born" 81 Chapter 3: Natural Universals and the Global Scale 88 "Dark rays" 113 Chapter 4: Nature Loving 121 "This earth, this island Borneo" 155 Chapter 5: A History of Weediness 171 PART III: Freedom "A hair in the flour" 205 Chapter 6: Movements 213 "Facilities and incentives" 239 Chapter 7: The Forest of Collaborations 245 Coda 269 Notes 273 References 297 Index 313
2,991 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1978
TL;DR: The third edition of The Routledge Classics edition as discussed by the authors is a translation analytic edition of the translation analytical part of the Third Edition Introduction to the Translation Analytical Part 1. Value and Money 2. The Value of Money as Substance 3. Money in the Sequence of Purposes Synthetic Part 4. Individual Freedom 5. The Money Equivalent of Personal Values 6. the Style of Life
Abstract: Acknowledgements Foreword to The Routledge Classics Edition Preface to the Third Edition Introduction to the Translation Analytical Part 1. Value and Money 2. The Value of Money as Substance 3. Money in the Sequence of Purposes Synthetic Part 4. Individual Freedom 5. The Money Equivalent of Personal Values 6. the Style of Life Appendix: The Constitution of the Text
2,078 citations
TL;DR: The role of accounting in the Structuring of Economic Behaviours: Peter Miller (The London School of Economics and Political Science) and Peter Miller et al. as discussed by the authors, on the role of Accounting in the structural role of economic behavior, have discussed the contribution of social sciences to the construction of markets.
Abstract: 1. On the Role of Accounting in the Structuring of Economic Behaviours: Peter Miller (The London School of Economics and Political Science). 2. Title not yet available: Michel Callon: (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Mines, Paris). 3. Does the State make the Market or the Market, the State? The Cosmologies of Railroad Kings in the United States and France: Frank Dobbin (Princeton University, USA). 4. The Proliferation of Social Currencies: V. Zelizer (Princeton University, USA). 5. Markets as Institutions: An Ethnographic Approach: Mitchel Abolafia (State University of New York). 6. The Contribution of Social Sciences to the Construction of Markets: The Case of Marketing: Frank Cochoy (Uiversiti de Toulouse). 7. Karl Polanyi Revisited: On the Great Transformation: Bruno Latour (Ecole des mines de Paris). 8. On the Constructions of Boundaries between the State and the Market: John Law (Keele University, UK). 9. The Politics of Industrial Policy and the Non--Market Governance Structure: The Case of Japan: Bai Gao (Duke University, USA). 10. How Economists Contribute to the Construction of Markets: The Case of the Cement Industry: Hervi Dumez and A. Jeunemaitre (Ecole Polytechnique, Paris). 11. Shifting Boundaries and Social Construction in the Early Electricity Industry 1876--1910: Mark Granovetter (Stanford University, USA). 12. Recombinant Property in Eastern European Capitalism: David Stark (Cornell University, USA). Index
1,885 citations
Book•
29 Aug 2008
TL;DR: MacKenzie as mentioned in this paper argues that the emergence of modern economic theories of finance affected financial markets in fundamental ways, and argues that economic models are an engine of inquiry rather than a camera to reproduce empirical facts.
Abstract: In An Engine, Not a Camera, Donald MacKenzie argues that the emergence of modern economic theories of finance affected financial markets in fundamental ways. These new, Nobel Prize-winning theories, based on elegant mathematical models of markets, were not simply external analyses but intrinsic parts of economic processes. Paraphrasing Milton Friedman, MacKenzie says that economic models are an engine of inquiry rather than a camera to reproduce empirical facts. More than that, the emergence of an authoritative theory of financial markets altered those markets fundamentally. For example, in 1970, there was almost no trading in financial derivatives such as "futures." By June of 2004, derivatives contracts totaling $273 trillion were outstanding worldwide. MacKenzie suggests that this growth could never have happened without the development of theories that gave derivatives legitimacy and explained their complexities. MacKenzie examines the role played by finance theory in the two most serious crises to hit the world's financial markets in recent years: the stock market crash of 1987 and the market turmoil that engulfed the hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. He also looks at finance theory that is somewhat beyond the mainstream -- chaos theorist Benoit Mandelbrot's model of "wild" randomness. MacKenzie's pioneering work in the social studies of finance will interest anyone who wants to understand how America's financial markets have grown into their current form.
1,650 citations
"Take an issue: cultural economy and..." refers background in this paper
...The focus of Miyazaki’s paper is market participants’ reflections on the difference between speculation and arbitrage, the latter, as he notes, the subject of rigorous exchange within the social studies of finance (for example, Beunza and Stark 2004; MacKenzie 2006)....
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...Donald MacKenzie too is mindful to recognize the materialities and interferences that come together in the continual making and remaking the ‘cranking and pushing’ of markets in derivatives....
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...Ethnographies form an essential part of Callon’s overarching anthropological approach (Callon 2005: 8; see also Hardie and MacKenzie 2006) and, as Miyazaki’s and MacKenzie’s papers make clear, they contribute to a better appreciation of the sociotechnical agencements of finance and the effect of…...
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...This line of inquiry is most recognizable in the work of Donald MacKenzie (2001, 2002, 2003a, 2003b, 2006), Beunza and Stark (2003, 2004), Beunza et al ....
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...It is the emphasis on the ‘systematic forms of knowledge deployed in markets or with their technological infrastructures’ (MacKenzie 2006: 25) that arguably distinguishes this line of inquiry from traditional economic sociology’s approach to financial markets which is ‘less concerned’ with these…...
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