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(How) Do Devices Matter In Finance?

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Listed:
  • Ismail Erturk
  • Julie Froud
  • Sukhdev Johal
  • Adam Leaver
  • Karel Williams

Abstract

This article distinguishes between different concepts of device. In traditional English usage, as in the Foucauldian or Deleuzian concept, devices exist in a context of power, opportunism and force. Through argument and evidence about hedge funds and financial innovation, we argue that this kind of non-Callonian device is ubiquitous in finance so that the idea of device can be part of a much more political analysis of the present-day capitalism. Capitalist devices are not neutral tools with fixed uses and predictable results because they vary in purpose and effects from one context to another. This is the point Deleuze makes in the context of nomadic war machine when he explains how a tool can be a weapon; and it is an issue in the present-day capitalism where we can ask whether politically strong financial elite have turned tools like short-selling into weapons that may harm other stakeholders in the economy. This article also connects devices in finance and the process of innovation with the desires of financial elites who enrich themselves and are negligent about the costly consequences of their bricolage for society. In this political frame, financial devices are products of a banking system that works for itself generating fees and bonuses and incidentally recreating pre-1914 levels of income inequality of historic proportions. This goes unchallenged because a democratic deficit allows financial elites to socialise losses and privatise gains.

Suggested Citation

  • Ismail Erturk & Julie Froud & Sukhdev Johal & Adam Leaver & Karel Williams, 2013. "(How) Do Devices Matter In Finance?," Journal of Cultural Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(3), pages 336-352, August.
  • Handle: RePEc:taf:jculte:v:6:y:2013:i:3:p:336-352
    DOI: 10.1080/17530350.2013.802987
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Kopczuk, Wojciech & Saez, Emmanuel, 2004. "Top Wealth Shares in the United States, 1916-2000: Evidence From Estate Tax Returns," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 57(2), pages 445-487, June.
    2. Robert J. Shiller, 2004. "Radical Financial Innovation," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 1461, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    3. Timothy Riddiough, 2001. "Intermediation, Standardization and Learning in Financial Markets: Some Evidence and Implications," Wisconsin-Madison CULER working papers 01-09, University of Wisconsin Center for Urban Land Economic Research.
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    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.
    2. Sarah Hall & Adam Leaver & Leonard Seabrooke & Daniel Tischer, 2023. "The changing spatial arrangements of global finance: Financial, social and legal infrastructures," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(4), pages 923-930, June.
    3. Jonathan Beaverstock & Adam Leaver & Daniel Tischer, 2023. "How financial products organize spatial networks: Analyzing collateralized debt obligations and collateralized loan obligations as “networked productsâ€," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(4), pages 969-996, June.
    4. Nick Bernards, 2022. "Waiting for the market? Microinsurance and development as anticipatory marketization," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(5), pages 949-965, August.
    5. Michael J. Zyphur & Dean C. Pierides, 2017. "Is Quantitative Research Ethical? Tools for Ethically Practicing, Evaluating, and Using Quantitative Research," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 143(1), pages 1-16, June.

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