Category: Markets

Don’t Buy the “Marketplace of Ideas”

Terry HathawayLeave a comment

Leicester_Market_2010.jpg

Economic imagery pervades societal discourse. Part of this imagery projects markets as existing everywhere; the common societal parlance sees talk of the car market, the grocery market, the computer market, or, simply, the market. Yet, excepting traditional marketplaces or medinas, these markets have no physical manifestation. Unlike with other major social institutions there is no where to visit; there is no headquarters. Instead, markets are said to exist when there are competitors in the provision of services or goods and where each competitor has a fair and equal chance of succeeding. The market, then, exists in a metaphorical, rather than physical, sense – it implies that the capitalist system operates diffusely like a marketplace, rather than there being an actual marketplace in which economic transactions take place.

The further extension of economic imagery has seen the market metaphor applied to the provision of political and economic ideas, with the notion being that there exists a level-playing field on which ideas are free to compete and that this competition will weed out weaker ideas. Hence, “no platforming” of racist or homophobic speakers should be staunchly opposed as it will impede the competitive destruction of abhorrent ideas. An important ancillary notion is that any idea that has come to be orthodox received wisdom has justly achieved this status through free and fair competition in the marketplace of ideas. 

The problems with this account of the ideational development of society are legion, but I’ll limit myself to explaining just three, namely 1) product heterogeneity, 2) distribution of ideas, and 3) production of ideas.Read More »

The Green New Deal: Whither Capitalism?

Güney Işıkara3 Comments

1599px-GreenNewDeal_Presser_020719_(26_of_85)_(46105848855).jpg

By Güney Işıkara and Ying Chen

The Green New Deal resolution by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey sparked an immense amount of discussion on all layers of political discourse, national and international. The way Ocasio-Cortez, Sanders and many others phrase the problem in the broader context of social, economic, and environmental grievances caused by capitalism is crucial for setting the terms of debate and struggle. This opens up space the left can use to address such issues in a systematic way rather than being content with symptomal healing. In fact, countless contributions have already been made on theoretical and tactical grounds. In this piece, we build on those contributions, and unpack the dynamics inherent to the capitalist system that would need to be addressed in the ongoing discussions. We also shed light on the limitations of a market-based and growth-centered approach to tackling climate destabilization, while offering other domains of political intervention such as property relations and demarketization of subsistence.Read More »

Harvesting data: Who benefits from platformization of agricultural finance in Kenya?

Gianluca Iazzolino8 Comments

Woman_farmer_in_Kenya

By Gianluca Iazzolino and Laura Mann.

Getting access to credit is a critical challenge for small-holder farmers all over Sub-Saharan Africa . A new breed of financial-technology firms (fintech) promises to address this issue, claiming that digital technologies can lower the barriers for borrowers and cut transaction costs for lenders. As part of our ongoing project on digitisation and data in US and Kenyan agriculture, we have been examining these claims, studying how tech companies translate them into business initiatives and exploring the implications for knowledge production, economic growth and value redistribution.

In rural Kenya, fintech innovations are premised on greater efficiency and transparency and inspired by narratives of digital disintermediation. Similarly to what argued for migrant remittances by Vincent Guermond in a previous post of this blog series , digital lenders harness data (extracted through digital infrastructures) and algorithms to make farmers more legible and, therefore, more predictable. In order to expand their pool of data, Kenyan fintechs are increasingly embedding themselves into inter-connected digital infrastructures, or platforms. These platforms provide farmers with end-to-end solutions, and thereby bundle together financial services with the provision of agricultural inputs and information extension services. In so doing, lenders recalibrate and harmonize their risk-assessment procedures, and construct an ideal type of farmer whose financial behaviours and importance in the local value chain can be clearly pinned down.Read More »

Financialising migration? Remittances, algorithms and digital finance

vincentguermond2 Comments

photo-1492940664705-726225a992a9.jpegHow are things “datafied?” This blog post aims to answer this question by offering a critical reflection on a wide range of recent initiatives that attempt to “datafy” remittances, i.e. leverage migrants’ and recipients’ money as a means to facilitate access to digital financial products and services for individuals and households, with a specific focus on Ghana. A handful of scholars have started to critically assess the political economy of the “financialisation of remittances”, calling into question an agenda that is animated not by the needs of migrant men and women but rather the political and financial concerns of a broad coalition of global and national actors relating to the socio-spatial expansion of markets (Datta, 2012; Cross,  2015; Kunz, 2013; Hudson, 2008; Zapata, 2018). Here, I want to focus on the yet neglected aspect of the construction of these remittance markets, rather than treating financialization as “an explanation in and of itself” (Fields, 2018:119).

Read More »

Market Forecasting: A Sensitive Practice at the Heart of Neoliberal Capitalism

stefanleinsLeave a comment

stories-of-capitalism-neoliberalism.jpg

This article was originally posted on The Economic Sociology and Political Economy community blog.

Since the emergence of modern financial markets, financial analysts have played a critical role in producing visions of “the economy” and its future development. As experts, they analyze market developments and predict future scenarios that enable other financial market participants to speculate on the rise or fall of stock prices, the success or failure of particular investment products, and the growth or decline of entire national economies. The substance of the analysts’ valuation and forecasting practices is, however, heavily disputed among economists. In neoclassical economic theory, the assumption that markets are informationally efficient has challenged the legitimacy of the work of financial analysts since the establishment of the efficient market hypothesis as a central paradigm in the mid 1960s. Alternative schools of thoughts – such as new institutional or behavioral economics – have criticized this paradigm. However, they have also argued that the degree of uncertainty, which is inherent to financial markets, makes prediction impossible.Read More »

Consuming development: Capitalism, economic growth and everyday life

Arve Hansen2 Comments

8425294663_f349d5e7cc_o.jpg

With the consumption patterns in rich countries being more unsustainable than ever and the consumption of the ‘emerging middle classes’ increasing rapidly, it is about time ‘consumption and development’ becomes a field of study. Such a field would necessarily be interdisciplinary and combine analyses of everyday life and the structures of capitalist development. A useful starting point could be found at the intersection of theories of practice and systems of provision.Read More »

The Power of the Market

desmondmcneill1 Comment

business-1730089_960_720.jpg

“The ‘market’ is a bad master, but can be a good servant.”
– S. Chakravarty (1993: 420)

In the world today, more and more interpersonal interactions are replaced by market transactions. The market system is both an economic and a cultural phenomenon, yet we seem to be hardly aware of the values that are bound up in it. This phenomenon is manifest at many levels: from the family, through the neighbourhood and the enterprise, to the nation and the globe. If there is such a thing as global ethics, I suggest, then they are – like it or not – the ethics of the market. My purpose here is to elaborate this claim, and to assess its implications. I shall distinguish between the market as a theoretical construct in economics, and the market as a social institution.

My main hypothesis can be briefly stated as follows: the most convincing ethical argument currently being made in favour of the market is its neutrality. Whether the market is in fact neutral may be disputed. But if one accepts this claim, it implies that the market is amoral, rather than immoral, and there remain, I suggest, two objections to allowing the market ethic to prevail. The first is that this is an abrogation of moral responsibility. It implies delegating decisions of major social and material significance to powers which are beyond our control, and whose outcome is uncertain. Second, the neutrality of the market comes at a cost in social and human terms; social relations between persons are replaced by contractual relations between economic agents.Read More »