Assets and assetization in financialized capitalism

Abstract

In the wake of the global financial crisis of 2007–09, political economists have typically identified and interrogated speculative logics and credit-debt relations as the markers of financialized capitalism. This paper argues that assets, and the contingent processes which turn all manner of things into assets (i.e. ‘assetization’), can also be usefully foregrounded to understand the character and movement of financialized capitalism in the contemporary conjuncture, particularly in its Anglo-American heartlands. Centred on assets and assetization, research is refocused on the constitution of political economies of rent and investment, especially as the frontiers of financialized capitalism are extended to further incorporate nature and society. Research into financialized capitalism is also connected more explicitly to wider political debates over intensified inequalities, as the production and distribution of assets is key to wealth disparities and shapes fundamental stratifications across society.

Keywords:

• Assets
• assetization
• financialization
• rent
• investment

Acknowledgements

It was a privilege to contribute to the Blind Spots in International Political Economy workshop at Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute (SPERI), co-hosted by Review of International Political Economy & New Political Economy, in March 2019. I would like to thank Genevieve LeBaron, Daniel Mügge, Jacqueline Best and Colin Hay for their invitation to participate and their subsequent editorial work. I would also like to thank all workshop participants and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive engagement with earlier versions of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Paul Langley

Paul Langley is Professor of Economic Geography at Durham University, UK. He is the author of Liquidity Lost (Oxford University Press, 2015), The Everyday Life of Global Finance (Oxford University Press, 2008), and World Financial Orders (Routledge, 2002). His current research focuses on the emergence and stabilization of new forms and spaces of finance in the wake of the global financial crisis, including ‘FinTech’, ‘green finance’, and ‘social finance’.