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The accountancy of marketisation: Fictional markets in housing land supply

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  • Quintin Bradley

Abstract

This article investigates the performative role of accountancy in embedding market mechanisms in public services. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi, it argues that marketisation can be understood as a work of calculative modelling in which the fiction of a self-regulating market is propagated through the concealment of the social and political practices on which it depends. Exploring this thesis in the marketisation of housing land supply, the article provides a forensic study of an accountancy procedure called the Housing Delivery Test that modelled an ideal housing market in the English land-use planning system. The study points to the importance of Polanyi's analysis in theorising the performativity of calculative practices in the project of marketisation, not as creating the economy they describe but in fashioning a fictional market.

Suggested Citation

  • Quintin Bradley, 2022. "The accountancy of marketisation: Fictional markets in housing land supply," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(3), pages 493-507, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:54:y:2022:i:3:p:493-507
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X211061583
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Goodwin, Geoff, 2018. "Rethinking the double movement: expanding the frontiers of Polanyian analysis in the Global South," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 87253, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
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