Forthcoming book: ‘The Spirit of French Capitalism’

The Spirit of French Capitalism: Economic Theology in the Age of Enlightenment. Charly Coleman, Stanford University Press 2021. How did the economy become bound up with faith in infinite wealth creation and obsessive consumption? Drawing on the economic writings of eighteenth-century French theologians, historian Charly Coleman uncovers the surprising influence …

Virtual event: Derivatives and recycling, 29 July

Building a market for exchange-traded derivatives for recyclables. Virtual event, 29 July 2020, 09.00-12.00 EST. Can financial innovations and markets can be forces for helping to protect our environment? Jordan Hall of Rowan University, New Jersey, has organised a free online event to discuss the potential for exchange-traded derivatives, such …

Just published: F&S vol. 6 no. 1

Finance and Society, vol. 6 no. 1 (2020).   The editors of Finance and Society are pleased to announce the publication of volume 6, number 1. The issue includes an article by Photis Lysandrou on financialisation and circuit theory, an essay by Daniel Tischer on Facebook’s Libra currency proposal, and …

Adkins and Konings: ‘Covid life and the asset economy’

Covid life and the asset economy. Lisa Adkins and Martijn Konings, Goldsmiths Press Blog. The asset economy is dominated by the logic of assets and especially by the logics of asset appreciation and depreciation … The state of emergency declared by many governments has not wiped away the political economy …

CFP: Critical finance studies ‘virtual’ conference, 2020

Critical finance studies conference 2020. Virtual get-together, 27-28 August. This year the annual Critical Finance Studies conference goes online. This event will include online keynote sessions by Gargi Bhattacharyya (University of East London) and Annie McClanahan (University of California, Irvine), online panels, and networking sessions. Topics could include but are …

Forthcoming: Edited collection on ‘Assetization’

Assetization: Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism. Edited by Kean Birch and Fabian Muniesa, MIT Press 2020. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines argue that the asset—meaning anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. …

Job opportunity at Finance Watch

Finance Watch, the Brussels-based public interest advocacy association dedicated to making finance serve society, is looking for a Senior Research and Advocacy Officer. The Senior Research and Advocacy Officer will join the Research and Advocacy team of currently six members, comprising the Head, two Senior Officers, an Advocacy and Research …

Forthcoming: The Routledge Handbook of Critical Finance Studies

The Routledge Handbook of Critical Finance Studies. Edited by Christian Borch and Robert Wosnitzer, Routledge 2020. The sociologically inclined landscape of finance studies is characterized by different more or less well-established homogeneous camps, with more empirical, social studies of finance approaches on the one of the spectrum and more theoretical, …

New book: The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion

The Exclusionary Politics of Digital Financial Inclusion: Mobile Money, Gendered Walls. Serena Natile, Routledge 2020. Focusing on Kenya’s path-breaking mobile money project M-Pesa, this book examines and critiques the narratives and institutions of digital financial inclusion as a development strategy for gender equality, arguing for a politics of redistribution to …

New essay: ‘Cutting the network?’

Cutting the network? Facebook’s Libra currency as a problem of organisation. Daniel Tischer. Finance and Society, EarlyView (2020). This essay explores the organisational character of Facebook’s Libra currency by undertaking a critical reading of documents published by the Libra Association. Drawing on the conceptual work of Marilyn Strathern and Michel Serres, …