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Finance beyond function: Three causal explanations for financialization
Author(s) -
Pitluck Aaron Z.,
Mattioli Fabio,
Souleles Daniel
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
economic anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2330-4847
DOI - 10.1002/sea2.12114
Subject(s) - financialization , politics , product (mathematics) , social studies of finance , function (biology) , extant taxon , sociology , positive economics , economics , economic sociology , state (computer science) , neoclassical economics , finance , social science , political science , law , geometry , mathematics , algorithm , evolutionary biology , computer science , biology
This article suggests that it is advantageous for social scientists to deliberately depart from functionalist theories seeking to explain the expansion of financial instruments and logics across social life. Rather, we identify three causes of financialization from three extant clusters of scholastic activity: an organic political economy that sees finance expanding as a product or by‐product of larger state‐ and imperial‐level political struggles, a relational sociology that sees the ways that finance expands by becoming another medium for expressing and constraining social relationships, and a cultural analysis that observes the increasing redefinition of discursive and material practices as financial. Across this larger discussion, we introduce and situate the contributions to this journal's special issue on financialization.