IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/taf/jculte/v5y2012i3p261-278.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Financial Engineering, Not Economic Photography

Author

Listed:
  • Chris Clarke

Abstract

In recent years, significant studies of finance have explored, on the one hand, the ways in which a specific financial theory might act as a ‘performative utterance’ which through its use makes itself true and, on the other hand, the ways in which discourses and practices of finance might act as continuous performatives that constitute key categories of finance and the financial subject. On first glance, the idea of self-actualising financial theory might seem closer to J. L. Austin's original conception of the performative utterance. However, in this article, I argue for the need to reclaim the Austinian heritage for the broader and more generic understanding of performative finance as well. In this sense, I suggest, a return to Austin reveals the importance of maintaining a focus not only on the potential performance of financial theory, but also those discourses and practices of finance that make up the deeper layers of performativity. I use questions about the role of financial engineering in the sub-prime crisis to illustrate that it is only through a conception of performative finance as self-actualising theories and as discourses and practices that the often obscured layers of financial engineering in society can be fully understood.

Suggested Citation

  • Chris Clarke, 2012. "Financial Engineering, Not Economic Photography," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 5(3), pages 261-278, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jculte:v:5:y:2012:i:3:p:261-278
    DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2012.674964
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/17530350.2012.674964
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1080/17530350.2012.674964?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Donald Mackenzie & Fabian Muniesa & Lucia Siu, 2007. "Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics," Post-Print halshs-00149145, HAL.
    2. Donald MacKenzie, 2006. "An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262134608, April.
    3. Donald MacKenzie & Fabian Muniesa & Lucia Siu, 2007. "Introduction to Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics," Introductory Chapters, in: Donald MacKenzie & Fabian Muniesa & Lucia Siu (ed.),Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics, Princeton University Press.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pitluck, Aaron Z., 2023. "The interpretive and relational work of financial innovation: A resemblance of assurance in Islamic finance," SocArXiv ce7kf, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Teppo Felin & Nicolai J. Foss, 2009. "Social Reality, the Boundaries of Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, and Economics," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 654-668, June.
    2. Andriani, Pierpaolo & Herrmann-Pillath, Carsten, 2011. "Performing comparative advantage: The case of the global coffee business," Frankfurt School - Working Paper Series 167, Frankfurt School of Finance and Management.
    3. Roberts, John & Jones, Megan, 2009. "Accounting for self interest in the credit crisis," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(6-7), pages 856-867, August.
    4. Christian Walter, 2020. "Sustainable Financial Risk Modelling Fitting the SDGs: Some Reflections," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(18), pages 1-28, September.
    5. Aligica, Paul Dragos, 2013. "Institutional Diversity and Political Economy: The Ostroms and Beyond," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199843909.
    6. Aaron Z. Pitluck & Fabio Mattioli & Daniel Souleles, 2018. "Finance beyond function: Three causal explanations for financialization," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 157-171, June.
    7. Francesco GUALA, 2015. "Performativity Rationalized," Departmental Working Papers 2015-07, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    8. Cochrane, David Troy, 2020. "Disobedient Things: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Accounting for Disaster," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 7(1), pages 3-32.
    9. Loconto, Allison & Rajão, Raoni, 2020. "Governing by models: Exploring the technopolitics of the (in)visilibities of land," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 96(C).
    10. Miguel Poiares Maduro & Giulio Pasi & Gianluca Misuraca, 2018. "Social Impact Investment in the EU. Financing strategies and outcome oriented approaches for social policy innovation: narratives, experiences, and recommendations," JRC Research Reports JRC111373, Joint Research Centre.
    11. Shaozeng Zhang, 2017. "From externality in economics to leakage in carbon markets: An anthropological approach to market making," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 4(1), pages 132-143, January.
    12. Sarah Bracking, 2012. "How do Investors Value Environmental Harm/Care? Private Equity Funds, Development Finance Institutions and the Partial Financialization of Nature-based Industries," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 43(1), pages 271-293, January.
    13. Teppo Felin & Nicolai J. Foss, 2009. "Performativity of Theory, Arbitrary Conventions, and Possible Worlds: A Reality Check," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 676-678, May.
    14. William Davies, 2013. "Book Review," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(1), pages 110-112, February.
    15. Power, Michael, 2021. "Modelling the microfoundations of the audit society: organizations and the logic of the audit trail," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 100243, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    16. Fabrizio Ferraro & Jeffrey Pfeffer & Robert I. Sutton, 2009. "How and Why Theories Matter: A Comment on Felin and Foss (2009)," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 20(3), pages 669-675, June.
    17. Pucci, Richard & Skærbæk, Peter, 2020. "The co-performation of financial economics in accounting standard-setting: A study of the translation of the expected credit loss model in IFRS 9," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    18. van Basshuysen, Philippe & White, Lucie & Khosrowi, Donal & Frisch, Mathias, 2021. "Three ways in which pandemic models may perform a pandemic," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 110996, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    19. Aleksandra Kuzior & Aleksy Kwilinski & Ihor Hroznyi, 2021. "The Factorial-Reflexive Approach to Diagnosing the Executors’ and Contractors’ Attitude to Achieving the Objectives by Energy Supplying Companies," Energies, MDPI, vol. 14(9), pages 1-16, April.
    20. Pierpaolo Andriani & Carsten Herrmann-Pillath, 2015. "Transactional innovation as performative action: transforming comparative advantage in the global coffee business," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 371-400, April.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:taf:jculte:v:5:y:2012:i:3:p:261-278. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.tandfonline.com/RJCE20 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.