Demystifying Finance

Everyday financialization: The case of UK households

“…To understand the interaction between norms of asset accumulation and everyday life, I develop a link to Foucault’s concept of governmentality, which is also used extensively in the financialization literature (Hardt and Negri, 2009; Langley, 2007; Sotiropoulos et al., 2013). This concept emphasizes that power is not exercised in a direct, disciplining way, but by establishing the environment, conditions and discourses leading to households disciplining themselves, that is conforming to created norms (Foucault, 2008).…”

“…It operates on the population as a whole, 4 and not the individual. Instead of directly prescribing individual behaviour, the desired market results are achieved by creating norms that market participants aim to comply with, such as a focus on risk–return relationships by companies and households alike (Sotiropoulos et al., 2013). This is not a binary distinction between normal and abnormal: there are different levels of ‘normalities’ where ‘the operation of normalization consists in establishing an interplay between these different distributions of normality and [in] acting to bring the most unfavourable in line with the more favourable’ (Foucault, 2004: 91).…”

“…Relations of power ‘depend on a multiplicity of points of resistance: these play the role of adversary, target, support, or handle in power relations’ (Foucault, 1978: 95) and can thus represent ‘ruptures’ or ‘innovation’ (Hardt and Negri, 2009: 59), for instance investing in silver rather than stocks because of distrusting the financial system. This concept is adapted here to norms of asset accumulation, depicting an extension to Sotiropoulos et al.’s (2013) elaborations on governmentality and capitalist relations. Before returning to this framework, I outline key debates in the everyday financialization literature and the chosen research methodology.…”

“…Source: depiction developed based on conducted interviews in connection with Foucault (2004) and Sotiropoulos et al. (2013: 166).…”

Value–rent–finance

“…Stating that rents are actively sought out by fictitious capital should not be confused with the claim – going back to the work of Veblen – that financial or absolute rent akin to profits creates a parasitic relation with industrial capital (see Sotiropoulos, Milios, and Lapatsioras, 2013: 16). Rather, we follow the internal relation between rent and the circulation of interest-bearing capital to unpack the social relations of private monopoly ownership that mediate the capitalisation of revenue streams attached to nature and infrastructure.…”