The italian way to financial accumulation. Personal networks and informal practices of the italian economic elites

This paper challenges the belief that Italian capitalism is a static and unchanging one. Italian capitalism has retained some unique characteristics: an elitist structure, close personal relationships, a high degree of informality. However, far from being just the characteristics of an unchanging capitalism, these peculiarities were the resources that Italian capitalism exploited to change its mode of action. First, we identify the network of interlocking actors in the Italian stock market and their set of informal practices, illustrating the paramount role of families and informal relationships. Second, we show why these characteristics did not prevent Italian capitalists to enter an era of financial accumulation. Resilience is the keyword, understood both as adaptation to changing conditions and as active reaction, a proper transformation. As an example of adaptation, we analyse how Italian capitalism has faced some institutional changes preserving its traditional power structure. As an example of transformation, we show how Italian capitalism adopted patterns of financial accumulation and maximization of shareholder value. Finally, we argue that informality and the dissemination of personal relationships are not impediment to change: in the practical logic of social and economic actors they are rather resources to be exploited when it comes to make changes without sacrificing the status quo

Jeanne Lazarus, Les politiques de l'argent, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France/Humensis, 2022, 336 p.

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Bringing dissent to shareholders’ meetings: An investigation into critical shareholding

This article deals with critical shareholding, that is, the action of non-profit organizations that resorts to involvement in corporate ownership as shareholders to promote socially responsible corporate behaviours. Based on the combined use of sociological and anthropological tools, I focus on the attendance of annual general meetings (AGMs) as a gateway to understand the potential and the limits of the transformative power of marginal actors in investment capitalism. My findings suggest that confrontation through share ownership exerts transformative pressures not only on companies but also on activist organizations, which over time are called to redefine their skills, actions and intervention logic to pursue their goals more effectively and report them to their stakeholders. Thus, the analysis of the phenomenon reveals the dialectical nature of the processes that take place in and around the AGM, giving them a place in the complex dynamics of movements and countermovements of finance and their mutual relationship

Establishing, or Failing? That Is the (Puzzling) Question. An Attempt to Introduce a Complementary Currency

In 2015–16 in Valle d'Aosta – a small autonomous region in northwestern Italy – some local politicians entered into dialogue with each other and the population on the suitability of a complementary currency in the regional territory. Despite the willingness of the promoters, the complementary currency was not launched in the end, partly for contingent reasons (regarding, inter alia, the definition of new political priorities and alliances), partly because of issues that were structural in nature: i.e. lack of structural embeddedness hindering collective action, inter-group ties and personal trust; and a low degree of institutional trust and of institutional transparency. Taking this case into account, this article aims to deepen understanding of the socio-institutional conditions that may favor or, on the contrary, hinder monetary innovation in a local context. Specifically, we highlight the lack of compactness of the proposal – concerning objectives, timing and territorial scale of implementation – and the emergence of a logic of competition with other political and entrepreneurial actors of the territory as the main weaknesses of the project. Furthermore, we show that a balance between the public and private spheres, leading to a heterophile and polycentric network, is needed in order to facilitate the implementation of a complementary currency