Creating and dissolving social groups from New Guinea to New York: on the overheating of bounded corporate entities in contemporary global capitalism

ABSTRACT

Attempts to create and fix the boundaries of various social entities have always been central features of modern capitalism. Such entities have always had the potential for either instability, on the one hand, or a lack of flexibility that is experienced by many as threatening, on the other. Such tensions have reached a point of intensification with the overheating of contemporary global capitalism. In this paper, we compare two examples of the changing and problematic nature of attempts to redraw the boundaries of such entities in an attempt to shape changing economic circumstances. The first is based upon research in Papua New Guinea, where attempts to create ever more bounded land holding groups with increasingly exclusive rights to parcels of land have exploded since the 1990s. The second is the changing nature of the corporation, perhaps the most significant entity in the history of global capitalism, whose boundaries have become increasingly unclear and permeable with the rise of finance capital. Whilst the move towards bounded landholder groups might seem to fit a narrative that would predict that a move towards capitalist modernity would entail the creation of ever more fixed and bounded social groups, the latter trend suggests that contemporary capitalist accumulation tends to simultaneously both fix and deconstruct the boundaries of such entities in different contexts. Contemporary overheated capitalism brings both tendencies to a head in a manner that makes the ever-present tension between them increasingly difficult to successfully manage or control.

KEYWORDS:

• Corporations
• overheating

View correction statement:

Correction to: Leaver, Adam and Martin, Keir, Creating and dissolving social groups from New Guinea to New York: on the overheating of bounded corporate entities in contemporary global capitalism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCiD

Keir Martin http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3157-0773

Notes

8 As, previously noted, both Lederman and Merlan and Rumsey have observed.

1 Wagner’s argument was to a large degree foreshadowed by Barnes’ (1962) critique of the application of African models of patrilineal descent groups to the New Guinea Highlands, but it is Wagner’s work that has gone on to have the most far-reaching influence in anthropological theory, perhaps due to its more sweeping general critique of the necessity of the assumption of the existence of social groups per se. Wagner’s work of the early 1970s went on to be a major influence on the so-called New Melanesian Ethnography of the late 1980s, for example.

2 For example, Lederman (1986) and Merlan and Rumsey (1991) both in their different ways explore a shifting dialectic between moments of apparent fixity and fluidity in the ways in which names create or relate to entities that could be described as social groups in the New Guinea Highlands.

3 The “London Interbank Offered Rate” is an average rate based upon what leading commercial banks in London would supposedly pay if borrowing from other banks. It is the main base interest rate upon which loans between commercial banks and other large financial institutes are calculated and is a fundamental part of the infrastructure underpinning global finance.

4 An intercompany loan is one from parent to subsidiary or subsidiary to parent within the same corporate network.

5 A monoline insurance company is one that provides guarantees and other credit enhancements to issuers of particular securities. They were principally involved in the insurance of municipal bonds in the USA but became embroiled in the sub prime crisis after providing credit enhancements for mortgage-backed securities and collateralized debt obligations in the 2000s. As these assets were written down, many monoline insurers were unable to meet their obligations and went into liquidation, leaving the assets they insured almost worthless.

6 That is a form of gaming the system by taking advantage of legal loopholes and technicalities.

7 A SIV is an investment vehicle, often sponsored by a bank, that invests in long-dated securities financed by short-term borrowing, often through the issuance of commercial paper. They make a profit traditionally through the credit spread between the lower interest rates on short-term debt and the higher returns on their long-term investments.