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Beginning with an original historical vision of financialization in human history, this volume then continues with a rich set of contemporary ethnographic case studies from Europe, Asia and Africa. Authors explore the ways in which finance inserts itself into relationships of class and kinship, how it adapts to non-Western religious traditions, and how it reconfigures legal and ecological dimensions of social organization, and urban social relations in general. Central themes include the indebtedness of individuals and households, the impact of digital technologies, the struggle for housing, financial education, and political contestation.
List of contents
List of Illustrations, Figures and Tables
Preface Chris Hann
Introduction: Transitions to What? On the Social Relations of Financialization in Anthropology and History
Don Kalb Chapter 1. Financialization, Plutocracy and the Debtor's Economy: Consequences and Limits
Richard H. Robbins Chapter 2. Accumulation by Saturation: Infrastructures of Financial Inclusion, Cash Transfers, and Financial Flows in India
Sohini Kar Chapter 3. Green Infrastructure as Financialized Utopia: Carbon Offset Forests in China
Charlotte Bruckermann Chapter 4. Altering the Trajectory of Finance: Meaning-Making and Control in Malaysian Islamic Investment Banks
Aaron Z. Pitluck Chapter 5. Financialization and Reproduction in Baku, Azerbaijan
Tristam Barrett Chapter 6. Financialization and the Norwegian State: Constraints, Contestations, and Custodial Finance in the World's Largest Sovereign Wealth Fund
Knut Christian Myhre Chapter 7. Capital's Fidelity: Financialization in the German Social Market Economy
Hadas Weiss Chapter 8. Redistribution and Indebtedness: A Tale of Two Settings
Deborah James Chapter 9. Retail Finance and the Moral Dimension of Class: Debt Advice on an English Housing Estate
Ryan Davey Chapter 10. Making Debt Work: Devising and Debating Debt Collection in Croatia
Marek MikuS Chapter 11. Financialized Kinship and Challenges for the Greek
Oikos Dimitra Kofti Chapter 12. Financialized Landscapes and Transport Infrastructure: The Case of Ciudad Valdeluz
Natalia Buier Chapter 13. Housing Financialization in Majorcan Holiday Rentals
Marc Morell Afterword: Financialization Beyond Crisis
Gavin Smith Index
About the author
Chris Hann is a Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His most recent book is Repatriating Polányi. Market Society in the Visegrád States (Central European University Press, 2019).
Don Kalb is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway, where he leads the Frontlines of Value project. Recent publications include Anthropologies of Class: Power, Practice, and Inequality, co-edited with James G. Carrier (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Worldwide Mobilizations: Class Struggles and Urban Commoning co-edited with Massimiliano Mollona (Berghahn Books, 2018).
