Consumer credit in comparative perspective

We review the literature in sociology and related fields on the fast global growth of consumer credit and debt and the possible explanations for this expansion. We describe the ways people interact with the strongly segmented consumer credit system around the world—more specifically, the way they access credit and the way they are held accountable for their debt. We then report on research on two areas in which consumer credit is consequential: its effects on social relations and on physical and mental health. Throughout the article, we point out national variations and discuss explanations for these differences. We conclude with a brief discussion of the future tasks and challenges of comparative research on consumer credit.Accepted manuscrip

Disarticulation and the Crisis of Neoliberalism in the United States

Neoliberal policies instituted since the 1980s have transformed the United States economy in ways that have produced serious structural distortions in the basic operation of capitalism. Using Samir Amin’s concept of disarticulation, previously applied exclusively to the periphery of the world economy, this article argues that the twin and mutually reinforcing features of neoliberalism – global corporate restructuring and financialization – have now generated disarticulation in the core nations. This disarticulated structure is responsible for the economic stagnation and sharply unequal income/wealth distributional outcomes that characterize contemporary U.S. capitalism

Moral economies of consumption

The aim of this article is twofold: first, to bring together debates about enduring normative concerns surrounding the morality of consumption with more recent concerns about the ways specific moralities are constituted in and through markets. The second aim is to develop the concept of ‘moral economy’ and call for an approach to its study, attentive to how moralities of consumption develop through interactions between instituted systems of provision, forms of state regulation, customs within communities and the everyday reflections of consumers about the things that matter to them. As consumers are increasingly asked to factor environmental and fair labour concerns into their purchase and post-purchase habits, there is a real need to understand how moralities of consumption are both formatted through institutional frameworks and shaped everyday by actors from within. After developing a framework for the study of moral economies, this article explores in depth the experiences of one couple in relation to the cessation of a cardboard recycling collection in Shropshire (England) to show why a multilevel perspective is needed to appreciate the place of morality within the market

Distinguishing Financialization from Neoliberalism

This article contends that neoliberalism and financialization, although sharing much in common, are not synonymous developments. Not only do strongly financialized nations display structural, economic differences, they are also directed by alternative economic epistemologies, cultures and practices. The argument is made by examining the financialization of the UK economy since the mid-1970s. This shift was not simply part of a broad transition away from Keynesianism and towards free market fundamentalism. It was also one very much guided by the particular economic paradigm, discursive practices and devices of the City of London as financial elites took up influential positions in the Thatcher government. The discussion and case example highlight five epistemological elements specific to finance: the creation of money in financial markets, the transactional focus of finance, the centrality of financial markets to economic management, the orthodoxy of shareholder value, and the intense microeconomic approach to financial calculation. Such elements, in conjuction with neoliberalism’s reliance upon finance-blind neoclassical economics, lies at the cultural and epistemological distinction between fiancialization and neoliberalism. Identifying such distinctions opens up new possibilities for understanding financialization, elites, and the neoliberal condition that brought about the financial crash of 2007-08, as well as the political and economic crises that have followed

Evolution of the knowledge economy: a historical perspective with an application to the case of Europe

The goal of the article is to explore the evolution of original concept of knowledge economy based on science intensive production sectors toward service type economies which significantly changed the role of scientific research and technological innovation for economic growth. The paper argues that this transition is due not only to the structural changes in global production, but the theoretical evolution and aradigmatic shift of the concept of “knowledge economy” in general and “knowledge” in particular has played a significant role. The paper examines the different interpretation of knowledge within new types of intangible economies (e.g., new/Internet, weightless, service, creative, cultural economies) where knowledge is perceived to be generated not as a product of scientific research but as a service or creative activity and critically examined the role of scientific research in a service led knowledge economy. Additionally the paper argue how these phenomena, which marked the global economy in the last decades, enable the transition of the standard concept of knowledge economy originated from industrial production and manufacturing to a knowledge economy equalized with various types of expanding intangible economies, primarily those based on service and creative industries

How expectations became governable: institutional change and the performative power of central banks

Central banks have accumulated unparalleled power over the conduct of macroeconomic policy. Key for this development was the articulation and differentiation of monetary policy as a distinct policy domain. While political economists emphasize the foundational institutional changes that enabled this development, recent performativity-studies focus on central bankers’ invention of expectation management techniques. In line with a few other works, this article aims to bring these two aspects together. The key argument is that, over the last few decades, central banks have identified different strategies to assume authority over “expectational politics” and reinforced dominant institutional forces within them. I introduce a comparative scheme to distinguish two different expectational governance regimes. My own empirical investigation focuses on a monetarist regime that emerged from corporatist contexts, where central banks enjoyed “embedded autonomy” and where commercial banks maintained conservative reserve management routines. I further argue that innovations towards inflation targeting took place in countries with non-existent or disintegrating corporatist structures and where central banks turned to finance to establish a different version of expectation coordination. A widespread adoption of this “financialized” expectational governance has been made possible by broader processes of institutional convergence that were supported by central bankers themselves

The anthropology of money and finance : between ethnography and world history

We review here recent developments in the anthropology of money and finance, listing its achievements, shortcomings and prospects, while referring back to the discipline‘s founders a century ago. We take our departure from the work of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi, both of whom combined openness to ethnographic research with a vision of world history as a whole. Since the 1960s, anthropologists have tended to restrict themselves to niche fields and marginal debates. From the 1980s the anthropological study of money and ethnographies of finance especially have taken off. Despite taking on new objects and directions, anthropologists still find it difficult to connect their situated analyses with global processes and world history. We propose some conceptual and empirical directions for research that would seek to overcome these limitations by integrating ethnography more closely with human history, while stressing the importance of money in shaping world society and in attempts to reform it.http://www.annualreviews.org/hb201