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2nd Call for Paper - AGG 2011 Seattle, 12-16 April
Geographies of Speculation: Time-Space, Capitalism and The Future in
Financial Markets
The circulation of finance capital reshapes and is reshaped by economic
geographies. As such, economic geographers have become increasingly
interested in the mechanisms and discourses enabling these processes.
They have not, however, thoroughly considered the processes through
which circuits of capital and financial market actors constitute the
future. Some attention has been paid to trading of futures instruments
and how these instruments relate to the discourses and materialities
shaped by past and present financial geographies. Might we now be
witnessing a qualitative shift in the function of financial instruments
from hedges against an uncertain future, to the construction of
particular futures? As the last three years show, the imagination of
the future by financial market actors has real material effects. In
particular, the growing prevalence of virtual monies, including but not
limited to financial derivatives, not only anticipates, but necessitates
a particular capitalist future. On the other hand, given the crises and
destruction of capital over the past three years as well as the ongoing
stagnancy of many economies and financial markets, derivatives and other
financial instruments expose the vulnerabilities of capitalism. This
session aims to explore these and other discourses and material
practices concerning the speculative nature of the future in financial
markets. Possible themes for papers might include, but are not limited to:
? Pools of credit and debt as examples of fictitious capital
? The virtuality of various money forms
? The role various states play in sustaining futures constructed
by financial markets
? The impact of financial derivatives on the present and future
of financial markets and geographies more generally
? Histories of financial derivative development specifically with
regard to changing constructions and imaginations of time.
? Histories of money forms
? Power geometries of financial markets and their impact on the
realisation of particular future scenarios
? How have particular conceptions of time, exemplified for
instance by currencies, debt or financial derivatives, spread
across the globe from financial centers? How have they been
contested and reshaped?
Please submit expressions of interest and abstracts of no more then 250
words to Chris Muellerleile, University of Wisconsin-Madison
([log in to unmask]) and/or Tim Heinemann, Queen Mary, University of
London ([log in to unmask]) by October 10, 2010.
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