Capitalization: A Cultural Guide

Fabian Muniesa, Liliana Doganova (), Horacio Ortiz (), Álvaro Pina-Stranger (), Florence Paterson (), Alaric Bourgoin, Véra Ehrenstein, Pierre-André Juven, (), David Pontille (), Basak Saraç-Lesavre () and Guillaume Yon ()
Additional contact information
Liliana Doganova: CSI i3 - Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Horacio Ortiz: IRISSO - Institut de Recherche Interdisciplinaire en Sciences Sociales - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Álvaro Pina-Stranger: CREM - Centre de recherche en économie et management - UNICAEN - Université de Caen Normandie - NU - Normandie Université - UR - Université de Rennes - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Florence Paterson: CSI i3 - Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Alaric Bourgoin: HEC Montréal - HEC Montréal
Véra Ehrenstein: Goldsmiths College - Goldsmiths, University of London - University of London [London]
Pierre-André Juven,: IFRIS - Institut francilien recherche, innovation et société - INRA - Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - OST - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - M.E.N.E.S.R. - Ministère de l'Education nationale, de l’Enseignement supérieur et de la Recherche - ESIEE Paris - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
David Pontille: CSI i3 - Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Basak Saraç-Lesavre: CSI i3 - Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Guillaume Yon: CSI i3 - Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation i3 - Mines Paris - PSL (École nationale supérieure des mines de Paris) - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - I3 - Institut interdisciplinaire de l’innovation - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: What does it mean to turn something into capital? What does considering things as assets entail? What does the prevalence of an investor's viewpoint require? What is this culture of valuation that asks that we capitalize on everything? How can we make sense of the traits, necessities and upshots of this pervasive cultural condition? This book takes the reader to an ethnographic stroll down the trail of capitalization. Start-up companies, research centers, consulting firms, state enterprises, investment banks, public administrations: the territory can certainly prove strange and disorienting at first sight, with its blurred boundaries between private appropriation and public interest, economic sanity and moral breakdown, the literal and the metaphorical, the practical and the ideological. The traveler certainly requires a resolutely pragmatist attitude, and a taste for the meanders of signification. But in all the sites in which we set foot in this inquiry we recognize a recurring semiotic complex: a scenario of valuation in which things signify by virtue of their capacity to become assets in the eye of an imagined investor. A ground-breaking anthropological investigation on the culture of contemporary capitalism, this work directs attention to the largely unexplored problem of capitalization and offers a critical resource for current debates on neoliberalism and financialization.

Keywords: Capital; Capitalization; Financialization; Anthropology; Cultural Economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Published in Presses des Mines, 2017, 9782356714220

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:halshs-01426044

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