Financialisation and Derivatives: Constructing an Artifice of Indifference

Abstract

This paper accords derivatives a central role in defining the character and dynamics of financialised accumulation. Under the guise of financial precision and a progressive innovation spiral, financial derivatives have instrumentalised risk so that ownership and property take a novel form. The advent of limited liability and absentee ownership in the second half of the nineteenth century marked the start of this process of transformation. At that stage, ownership became fleeting and its relationship to the underlying technical process uncertain, loose and complex. Risk management through derivatives takes this a stage further. Derivatives imply that ownership can take a form wherein there are no direct ties to a particular asset, and therefore no possibility of a conceptual link between property and stewardship. Instead, ownership proceeds on the basis of disengagement and financialisation proceeds via the construction of indifference to the exigencies of ‘real’ economic competition.

Keywords

Derivatives Financialisation Risk Property

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