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CFP: AAG Annual Meeting New Orleans April 10-14, 2018
Rethinking value in financial times
Organizers: Mikael Omstedt (University of British Columbia) & Joe Daniels (University of British Columbia/University of Nottingham)
Since the 2007-2008 subprime mortgage crisis, the role of finance in the unfolding of economic geographies has gained the attention of many who long neglected it in favor of the “real” economy. Simultaneously, the question of value as that which ties capitalism’s “immense collection of commodities” together has made a return in political economy. The relationship between these two developments has, however, been fraught. In particular, thinkers drawing on Marx’s labor theory of value have traditionally been reluctant to treat financial instruments –“fictitious capital”— as bearers of value (cf. Harvey, 1982). Under present day financialized conditions this orthodoxy is increasingly being questioned, most forcefully by Bryan et al (2015: 308) who have argued that “if theories of value cannot incorporate finance in a central role they are disengaged from the frontiers of capital accumulation.”
Empirically, this questioning has meant that the ability of financial derivatives to synthesize a range of localized concrete uncertainties into an measure of commensurable “abstract risk” has received much attention (LiPuma & Lee, 2004). Additionally, the rise of social finance has attended to how market actors negotiate a growing complexity of financial, environmental and social value regimes (Barman, 2015) while geographers have contributed by unpacking the valuation practices of conservation finance (Christophers, 2016; Kay, 2017) and those of the bio-economy (Birch, 2017). In this work, the sharp distinctions between political economic approaches to “value” and Science & Technology Studies’ interest in “valuation” are breaking down, pointing towards their productive points of engagement (cf. Bigger & Robertson, 2017). As of now, however, it has been those geographers working in a tradition of political ecology that have pioneered these emerging discussions.
In a couple of sessions we therefore seek to draw such contributions together while also extending the conversation to a broader range of economic geographers. In this sense, we seek papers that engage with the relationship between value(s), valuation practices and finance from a range of theoretical and methodological standpoints. We welcome empirical papers on the role of finance in particular valuation regimes as well as more theoretical contributions, inviting submissions that address questions including (but not limited to):
What is the value of the concept “fictitious capital” under conditions of financialization?
Is a “labor” theory of value possible in finance? What might it look like? What is politically at stake in Mann’s (2010: 176) call to “re-examine value-theory’s attachment to its ‘labour’ predicate?”
What are the relationships between value and proximal conceptualizations of price, risk, rent, and return? What are the relationships between value production and value extraction? How do we distinguish between these different concepts and processes within financial markets?
What are the techniques, performances and discourses necessary in making financial instruments “valuable?”
How do new digital technologies shape the production and circulation of value within financial(izing) markets?
What role does nature play in emerging regimes of financial valuation?
We envision 1-2 paper sessions followed by a concluding panel discussion. Please send 250 word abstracts to [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask] by October 8. We will notify accepted papers by October 15.
References
Barman, E. (2015). Of Principle and Principal: Value Plurality in the Market of Impact Investing. Valuation Studies, 3(1), 9–44. https://doi.org/10.3384/VS.2001-5592.15319
Bigger, P., & Robertson, M. (2017). Value is Simple. Valuation is Complex. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 28(1), 68–77. https://doi.org/10.1080/10455752.2016.1273962
Birch, K. (2017). Rethinking Value in the Bio-economy: Finance, Assetization, and the Management of Value. Science, Technology, & Human Values, 42(3), 460–490. https://doi.org/10.1177/0162243916661633
Bryan, D., Rafferty, M., & Jefferis, C. (2015). Risk and Value: Finance, Labor, and Production. South Atlantic Quarterly, 114(2), 307–329. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-2862729
Christophers, B. (2016). Risking value theory in the political economy of finance and nature. Progress in Human Geography, 30913251667926. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516679268
Harvey, D. (1982). The Limits to Capital. London: Verso.
Kay, K. (2017). A Hostile Takeover of Nature? Placing Value in Conservation Finance Antipode. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12335
LiPuma, E., & Lee, B. (2004). Financial Derivatives and the Globalization of Risk. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Mann, G. (2010). Value after Lehman. Historical Materialism, 18(4), 172–188. https://doi.org/10.1163/156920610X550640