Following a ‘standstill’: An ethnographic approach to financialization

This article addresses Dubai's recent financial crisis, bringing an ethnographic approach to ‘financialization’. It does so by repurposing the financial concept of ‘standstill’. Focusing on the consequences of the Dubai government's infamous ‘standstill announcement’, in late 2009, it argues that unpacking the literal and figurative registers of this concept offers insights into the political economy and lived experiences of financial crises.     

‘Every household will be a micro-enterprise’: a youth micro-loan scheme’s role in restructuring Nepal

ABSTRACT

Lack of secure employment mobilized many young people into Nepal’s civil war and a decade of political opposition (1996–2006). As a result, both the post-war government and foreign donors invested in policies aimed to harness the productive capacities of young people in restructuring the nation. This article explores the theme of aspiration on the national and personal level and their convergence through a micro-finance program in post-war Nepal, the Youth, Small Enterprise, and Self-Employment Fund (YSEF). The national-level aspiration to make ‘new Nepal’ hinged on young people fulfilling their personal aspirations. I consider whether post-conflict pacification measures like YSEF can foster the sense of national belonging necessary by analyzing the challenges faced in instituting this loan scheme nationally and locally along Nepal’s open border with India. Analyzing YSEF’s institution from a borderland optic reveals assumptions inherent in peacebuilding intervention and limits YSEF’s ability to wholly accommodate its recipients. I suggest that the government’s attempt to bring marginalized youth into the ‘official’ economic fold through YSEF falls short in accommodating young people’s livelihood aspirations within their lived reality. Instead young people are creating pathways beyond state dependence.     

Financialization of hotel corporations in Spain

One of the cutting-edge topics being currently debated in social sciences is the impact of financialization on corporations and on different geographical contexts. Surprisingly enough, there have been very few studies that have explicitly dealt with this issue within tourism studies. In this paper, the issue of financialization within tourism is addressed through an analysis of hotel corporations. Taking a case-study approach, it is argued that Spanish hotel chains are increasingly becoming financialized since a minimization of the impact of global financial crisis on these corporations is urgently required. The argument is not that hotel corporations’ financialization is necessarily new, but rather that the impact of the global financial crisis has led to an intensification of this very process. Taking as case studies the three largest Spanish hotel corporations (Meliá Hotels International, NH Hoteles and Grupo Barceló), the current crisis-led hotel financialization is dealt through four interrelated spheres: (1) built environment (hotel buildings property becoming controlled by financial funds), (2) actors (emergence of new agents as a result of hotel corporations intertwining with financial corporations), (3) hotel profit extraction (reliance on the secondary circuit of capital), (4) financial engineering instruments (forms of fictitious capital that are new in the context of hotel corporations). The article shows how the process of financialization of hotel corporations illustrates broad trends of both financialization and capital accumulation. Specifically, the main findings are on one hand, that financialization not only fixes capital on the ground, but also creates liquidity. On the other hand, that the selling of property titles is an increasing profit niche with differentiated geographical locations. The last significant finding is that financialization helps to improve profitability of non-financia corporations such as hotel chains.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 39, Number 4. August 2023

Front and back cover caption, volume 39 issue 4 CBDC'S BOTANICAL IMAGERY In the ever-evolving landscape of global finance, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has cultivated a botanical metaphor to illustrate the concept of central bank digital currency (CBDC). In this issue, Swartz & Westermeier explore this metaphor (illustrated here by Matthew Kurina), presenting a fascinating anthropological perspective on the intersection of technology, economy and imagination. The BIS's metaphorical ‘money tree’ positions the central bank as the sturdy trunk, providing stability and support to the financial ecosystem. The branches, representing various financial institutions, extend from this trunk, while the leaves, symbolizing the diverse forms of money, flourish at the periphery. This metaphor not only encapsulates the hierarchical structure of the financial system but also naturalizes the concept of CBDC, subtly implying its inevitability and organic integration into the existing monetary ecosystem. The BIS uses the ‘money flower’, another botanical metaphor, to classify the past, present and future forms of money. The petals of this flower represent different characteristics of money, such as whether it is digital or physical, centralized or decentralized. This metaphorical taxonomy provides a framework for understanding the evolution of money and the potential role of CBDCs in the future financial landscape. However, while visually appealing and conceptually insightful, these botanical metaphors also raise anthropological questions. They mask the sociopolitical implications of CBDCs, presenting them as natural phenomena rather than human-made constructs. This portrayal glosses over the potential power dynamics, control mechanisms and geopolitical tensions inherent in adopting CBDCs. As we stand at the precipice of a new era in digital currency, these metaphors serve as a reminder of the need for critical engagement with the narratives that shape our understanding of complex financial technologies. The ‘money tree’ and ‘money flower’ are not just symbols of financial evolution, but also tools of persuasion, framing our perception of the future of money. CULTURAL EVOLUTION IN THE AGE OF NFTs The Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), an intriguing collection of algorithmically generated cartoon ape NFTs etched into the Ethereum blockchain, has not only sparked a cultural phenomenon but also inspired the first ever NFT-themed restaurant, Bored & Hungry, in Long Beach, California, USA. Why apes? A BAYC founder suggests it is a response to the existential ennui that follows the attainment of vast wealth through crypto investments. ‘Once you've achieved unimaginable wealth, what's next? You join a swamp club with a bunch of apes and embrace the unusual’. Or, you could always enjoy a burger. Yet, these seemingly whimsical endeavours are more than just a pastime for the crypto rich. NFTs signify a profound shift in the political discourse surrounding blockchain technology. They challenge the financialization of blockchain, aligning with a contemporary wave of anti-finance far-right populism and potentially offering an alternative to the prevailing capitalist democratic order. In this issue, Bill Maurer delves into the uneasy relationship between the concept of non-fungibility and anthropological theories of embedded or social economies. This tension, he suggests, could pave the way for a post-neoliberal future, one that is not rooted in finance but in regenerative models for future social worlds. From an anthropological perspective, the rise of NFTs and blockchain technology represents a fascinating evolution of societal norms and values. It challenges our traditional understanding of ownership, value and community, creating a new form of ‘digital tribalism’ where belonging is tied to shared digital assets. Furthermore, the boredom expressed by the crypto wealthy and their subsequent retreat into a virtual ‘swamp club’ can be seen as a form of digital ‘potlatch’, a ceremonial feast of the Kwakiutl, where status is asserted not through wealth accumulation, but through its ostentatious disposal. As blockchain technology continues infiltrating all aspects of life, anthropology grapples to understand its impact. The cultural shift it brings is as significant as it is complex, and its full implications are yet to be unravelled.     

Remote Sensibilities: Discourses of Technology and the Making of Indonesia’s Natural Disaster

During the extended El Nin?o drought of 1997–8, fires devastated Indonesia’s forests, creating a vast shroud of smoke that reached as far as mainland Southeast Asia. This article examines the interpretation of these fires — their causes, damages and solutions — by the Indonesian government, international donors, environmental activists and local farmers. It explores the contexts and consequences of these discourses of disaster, and specifically investigates the central role of remote technology — a ‘hegemonic’ representational tool, in some circumstances creatively appropriated to serve new democratic agendas. A narrow focus on remotely sensed data is not strictly a methodological but also a political choice, one which obscures alternative experiences of disaster and produces solutions that do not address long term social and political processes leading to the fires. What is missing from most current analyses of the fires, and from remote assessments in general, is a textured understanding of social landscapes and the role they play in creating fire hazards.     

Financialization and Global Commodity Chains: Distributional Implications for Cotton in Sub‐Saharan Africa

Restructuring of global and local markets has led to an increased influence of commodity derivatives markets on commodity price setting. This has critical implications for price risks experienced by actors along commodity chains. Commodity derivatives markets have undergone significant changes that have been referred to as the ‘financialization of commodities’, which we define as an increase in trading activity by financial investors and the reorientation of business strategies by commodity trading houses towards risk management and financial activities. This article assesses how these global financialization processes affect commodity producers in low‐income countries via the operational dynamics of global commodity chains and national market structures. It investigates how prices are set and transmitted and how risks are distributed and managed in the cotton sectors in Burkina Faso, Mozambique and Tanzania. It concludes that uneven exposure to price instability and access to price risk management have important distributional implications. Whilst international traders have the capacity to deal with price risks through hedging, in addition to expanding their profit possibilities through financial activities on derivatives markets, local actors in producing countries face the challenge of increased short‐termism — albeit to different extents depending on national market structures — with limited access to risk management.     

Who needs a review of the financial system in Australia? the case of the Wallis inquiry

The Howard government reoriented the then existing institutionally based financial regulation towards a functionally based regime with new prudential and disclosure regulators in 1998. This paper uses the governmental agenda-setting framework of John Kingdon to explain this financial regulatory change undertaken in Australia following the Wallis Inquiry of 1996. It also examines the role of the Inquiry in the policy process. It shows that the financial regulatory change was on the bureaucratic agenda of the Treasury Department. A window of opportunity opened for the Treasury following the 1996 election, with the new Howard government keen to achieve financial regulatory reforms to address future regulatory challenges proactively while the new Treasurer Peter Costello wanted to consolidate his power within markets and politics. Costello coupled the Treasury's solutions to problems and to political processes. The Wallis Committee was ‘packed’ by the government in accordance with its regulatory policy preferences. Its role was to legitimise the government's policy preferences publicly, and to transfer the ‘governmental agenda’ into the ‘public agenda’. However, this was not a case of the government pressuring for its policy preferences over the financial services industry. In fact, the Inquiry was used as a venue to generate industry and public support for the regulatory changes, and was used to build a network of alliances within and outside the parliament.     

Universalized categories,dissonant realities: gendering postconflict reconstruction in Nepal

International agencies, nongovernmental organizations, governmental agencies, and development policy-makers have sought to incorporate ‘gender mainstreaming’ into postconflict policies and programs in an effort to ameliorate the unequal gender impacts of war. This article uses narratives of widow heads of household collected through field research in Nepal in 2008 and 2011 to illustrate how postconflict development discourses purporting to engage with gender not only take a narrow view of gender (i.e., by equating it to women-focused activities), but also neglect the complex and dynamic realities of women's lives. Postconflict interventions employ simplistic assumptions that neglect gender-specific postconflict insecurities and oppressions (such as systematic violence against women). By neglecting the crucial significance of social networks for widows' survival, postconflict reconstruction assumes women to be individualized receptacles for development/empowerment. The crucial role of social networks in constraining women's agency is obscured. At the same time, assumptions of homogeneity ingrained in universalized categories such as ‘widow’ and ‘conflict-affected’ obfuscate women's multiple identities, roles, and agency in their struggles for survival. The insights emerging from field research suggest a greater attunement of postconflict development interventions to women's lived experiences and social settings.     

Negotiation of Social Values in the World Heritage Listing Process: A Case Study on the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal,China

This paper examines the World Heritage listing process for the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal to understand the sociopolitical meanings of heritage in contemporary China. Over the past four decades, the efforts of the Chinese government have been clearly geared towards improving governance over heritage sites by designating them as state properties, which requires the selection and evaluation of cultural heritage sites on the specific political meaning based on historical, aesthetic, or scientific value. In the process of World Heritage listing of Chinese heritage sties, the model of ‘state properties’ had to be compatible with UNESCO’s understanding of ‘heritage’, as well as economic benefits of heritage. Drawing on the data collected from the process of World Heritage listing of the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, this paper explores the integration of the social meanings of heritage into the ‘authorized’ values criteria, facilitating multiple uses of ‘heritage’ through collaboration among UNESCO, Chinese heritage officials, and local communities. It argues that practices of heritage that consider social meanings will integrate local communities’ understandings into political meanings of heritage on basis of central government’s interests. This paper shows how the social meanings of heritage create a dialectical relationship to enable a ‘living’ cultural process in the preservation of ‘state properties’. In addition, the social meanings of heritage allow all potential stakeholder groups to negotiate with the heritage bureaucracy, as well as strengthening the role of local interests in heritage policy.     

Out from the (Green) shadow? Neoliberal hegemony through the market logic of shared urban environmental governance

Recent work in critical geography describes the neoliberalization of urban social service provision through a transition from state provision to civil sector delivery. The concept of a ‘shadow state’ is deployed by some social theorists to describe this process by which nonprofits with government contracts increasingly adopt a state-oriented agenda for the execution of social entitlement programs. Possible linkages between the neoliberalization of urban environmental service provision and a shadow state are lacking by comparison. I, therefore, use qualitative data concerning three organizations in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to demonstrate that civil sector groups are stepping up as local government diminishes its markets for municipal environmental labor. However, the diverse compositions of these shared governances potentially complicate the efficacy of a shadow state thesis for describing environmental provision in inner-city Milwaukee. Instead, I argue that a Gramscian interpretation of shared governance better accounts for the neoliberalization of environmental service provision as government agencies and civil sector groups relate to one another through hegemonic market logic. I argue that this provides a more nuanced picture of how governance concerning the urban environment is constructed by the government, market, and civil sectors to further shape human social reproduction.     

The Problem of Slums: Shifting Methods of Neoliberal Urban Government in Morocco

This article puts forward two main arguments. First, it highlights the relationship between different phases of neoliberalism in Morocco together with the specific methods and techniques of urban government that were deployed in an effort to govern the slums and their populations. A period of ‘roll back neoliberalism’ during the 1980s generated reforms that tried to increase government control over the urban territory to compensate for the negative social outcomes of structural adjustment. The subsequent period of ‘roll out neoliberalism’ coincided with the attempt to manage and regulate the slum population through new modalities of state intervention. Second, while evolutions in neoliberal government reflected a gradual process, this transition in Morocco was accelerated by security concerns following two moments of serious urban violence: the 1981 riots and the 2003 suicide bombings in Casablanca. Therefore, Morocco's recent political transformations cannot be understood in terms provided by the mainstream narrative linking economic liberalization to democratization. Rather, they reflect a profound shift towards intrinsically authoritarian modalities of neoliberal government which are clearly revealed at the urban scale.     

‘Social Exclusion’ Discourse and Chronic Poverty: A South African Case Study

This article questions the export of ‘social exclusion’ discourse to the field of development and poverty studies. It considers the findings of ongoing research into chronic poverty in the Western Cape district of Ceres, one of the centres of the South African deciduous fruit export industry. It explores the links between the livelihood options of poor people and processes of global integration, agro‐food restructuring and the modernization of paternalist farming styles. In this context the concept of ‘social exclusion’ is of only limited utility, and has significant disadvantages. Although it has the potential to focus attention on the disabling effects of poverty, its most common usage often fails to capture how poverty can flow not only from exclusion but also from processes of integration into broader economic and social networks. The author argues that these are better captured by the notion of ‘adverse incorporation’, and calls for a more cautious approach to the modernizing myths and moralizing narratives that shape policy debates.     

British Muslims,multiculturalism and UK foreign policy: ‘integration’ and ‘cohesion’ in and beyond the state

After the 7 July and 21 July 2005 attacks on London the government‐sponsored effort to ‘prevent extremism together’ has repeatedly acknowledged the central role of anger at UK foreign policy in the radicalization of some British Muslims. This acknowledgement has been incorporated into a ‘comprehensive framework for action’ centring upon the need for increased ‘integration’ and an effort, critically, to re‐work British multiculturalism as a means to combat terrorism. Examining the history of multiculturalism in Britain and the tradition of living and acting ‘together’ that it suggests, however, raises a set of questions about the society into which integration is supposed to occur, what integration might involve and its real efficacy for combating terrorists. In addressing these issues, this article suggests that the debate over contemporary multiculturalism should be situated within a much wider social and political crisis over the meaning of ‘community’ in the UK, to which questions of global order and foreign policy are central. Comparing the ‘ethical’ basis of Al‐Qaeda's attacks with Tony Blair's invocation of ‘values’ as the foundation for military intervention reveals that both seek to realize models of community through violence and a shared process of ‘radicalization’ which in both cases precedes 9/11 and which might be traced back to the Gulf War of 1991. The article concludes that debate over the future of multiculturalism in the UK is being conducted alongside and is implicated within a second, violent global conflict over community: one which is central to, but essentially unarticulated within the domestic context.     

How real estate became ‘just another asset class’: the financialization of the investment strategies of Dutch institutional investors

The managers of a growing wall of money are continuously searching for investment opportunities. The financialization literature describes how this mobile capital puts pressure on commodities, debt, public services and economic activities to transform into investable, tradable, financial products. Regarding real estate, these investigations show how opaque, local, non-standardized goods, highly depending on both local legislation and developments, have been transformed into liquid, globally traded financial assets. By analysing the real estate investment strategies of Dutch institutional investors since the 1980s, this paper shows how a quantitative framework increasingly provides the basis for institutional investors’ real estate investment strategies. Direct ownership of properties has been exchanged into shares of properties, that is, fictitious capital, creating an impetus for ‘objectified numbers’ to measure the performance of these indirect investments. As knowledge about real estate has been outsourced, Dutch institutional investors now perceive real estate increasingly as ‘just another asset class’, thereby increasing leverage and volatility. This paper not only shows how finance ‘financialized’ itself by adopting a quantitative investment perspective, but it also offers an empirical account on how investment properties are transformed into financial assets that put pressure on state agencies to mobilize urban planning to deliver more of such assets.     

The Politics of Service Delivery Reform

This article identifies the leaders, the supporters and the resisters of public service reform. It adopts a principal–agent framework, comparing reality with an ‘ideal’ situation in which citizens are the principals over political policy‐makers as their agents, and policy‐makers are the principals over public service officials as their agents. Reform in most developing countries is complicated by an additional set of external actors — international financial institutions and donors. In practice, international agencies and core government officials usually act as the ‘principals’ in the determination of reforms. The analysis identifies the interests involved in reform, indicating how the balance between them is affected by institutional and sectoral factors. Organizational reforms, particularly in the social sectors, present greater difficulties than first generation economic policy reforms.     

Engendering the New Enclosures: Development,Involuntary Resettlement and the Struggles for Social Reproduction in Coastal Tanzania

This article engages with the feminist concept of ‘social reproduction’ to arrive at a richer understanding of the gendered processes and outcomes of contemporary large‐scale land acquisitions, or the ‘new enclosures’. It focuses on the case of a recent land deal for industrial sugarcane production in the Coast Region of Tanzania and the resultant process of involuntary resettlement. It critically analyses people's struggles for land in the face of imminent displacement, and the gendered ways they experience the erosion of their pre‐existing modes of social reproduction. It argues that enclosure of rural landscapes does more than immediately strip peasants and pastoralists of their means of production and turn them into wage labourers. It gradually uproots them from their socio‐ecological knowledges, cultural practices and historical memories, which are rooted on the land and articulated through gender. The highly uncertain processes of enclosure and displacement also force rural women and men to renegotiate their livelihood strategies and intra‐household gender relations.     

Coercive Harmony,Deep Capture and Environmental Justice in Puerto Rico

This article examines how a regional NGO and a local‐issue GRO in Puerto Rico have approached health and environmental concerns over water pollution from pharmaceutical production, and the consequences this has had for corporate–community–government relations. Through the analysis of historical material, public meetings and interviews, the processes through which micropolitical patterns have developed, and through which residents least conciliatory towards the drug companies are silenced, are discussed. The article questions whether persistent conflict between the corporate–government alliance and grassroots environmentalists is attributable to a ‘gap in understanding’ and suggests that the relationship is better understood through the complementary theories of ‘coercive harmony’ and ‘deep capture’. In conclusion it points out that researchers should be wary of assisting or supporting negotiations, and rather should focus on critically examining the dynamics of ‘stakeholder dialogue’ as a negotiation between relative equals.     

Linked (im)mobilities and the relational politics of movement in post-earthquake Nepal

ABSTRACT

This article highlights the importance of various (im)mobilities that were induced by the massive 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Nepal on 25 April 2015. It analyzes over 120 news articles published in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, arranging these into a mobility-centric narrative that highlights the politics of movement in the disaster’s wake. Drawing on the theoretical and methodological “mobilities turn”, I introduce the concept of linked (im)mobilities to demonstrate the complex dialectics structuring (im)mobilities after the disaster. More specifically, Nepal’s post-earthquake (im)mobilities intersected with one another and with a variety of geographic and political factors to produce a mutually constitutive web of contingent movements. Attending to these not only underscores the centrality of (im)mobilities themselves. By raising questions of scale, inequality, bordering, and “islanding”, the approach advanced here widens our analytical frame. It offers a conceptual architecture capable of encompassing more factors (beyond mobility), thereby facilitating a broader understanding of the disaster event and its various outcomes.     

Front and Back Covers,Volume 32, Number 3. June 2016

Front and back cover caption, volume 32 issue 3 Front cover STANDSTILL Behzad Sarmadi tells the story of Dubai's descent into an economic crisis in 2009 by seizing on the financial concept of ‘standstill’. The government of Dubai publicly (and unilaterally) invoked this concept in late 2009 so as to pause the debt obligations of a ‘government‐related’ corporation in the face of immanent bankruptcy. This figurative use of standstill by the city‐state, however, soon manifested itself in the city. Cars once owned by over‐indebted foreign residents began to accumulate dust on the sides of roads and parking lots as they were abandoned to literally stand still. Sarmadi examines this process by repurposing the notion of standstill as a tool with which to ethnographically link the structural dimensions of a financial crisis and its lived experience. Back cover DISEASES OF THE SOUTH At night the chimneys of the Ilva steelworks loom behind a residential building in Taranto, southern Italy. The largest steelworks in Europe, and one of the few former state factories still standing in southern Italy, Ilva provides much needed employment in an impoverished region. However, it is also one of the worst polluters in Italy. Epidemiological studies have shown a high incidence of pulmonary cancers in the area, prompting Italian legal authorities to put the owners on trial for illegal polluting emissions. In spite of the unhealthy environment both in Taranto and in toxic waste‐ridden Terra dei fuochi, near Naples, the state's dominant message is for its residents to adopt ‘healthier lifestyles’. Biomedicine emphasizes individual, lifestyle‐linked factors of disease. Yet such an emphasis diminishes some of the most obvious underlying factors, such as pollution, over which individuals have little or no control, and which affects entire territories and populations. When a population is stigmatized or racialized as ‘backwards’, as southern Italians are, even the most obvious environmental injustices can be obfuscated in this way. In southern Italy, as in other areas hit by environmental injustice, marginality is compounded by a stigma that demonizes as irrational local environmental movements fighting pollution on their own doorstep. Effectively, people are blamed for aiding and abetting their own diseases. While the health‐or‐jobs dilemma is a classic issue of industrialization, companies have even more power to pollute once they are the only source of jobs left.     

The Transylvanian promise: political mobilisation,unfulfilled hope and the rise of authoritarianism in interwar Romania

This article addresses the relationship between political mobilisation by raising hope for change and the increasing loss of confidence in democratic order in the Romanian transformation process after the First World War from a regional perspective. The survey focuses on the political discourse of the Transylvania-based National Party (from 1926 the National Peasants’ Party), which gained governmental power in 1928 through regionalist activism, benefiting from a multi-stranded discourse of permanent crisis caused by living conditions that could not meet the expectations of social advancement raised by the general enthusiasm about the emergence of ‘Greater Romania’. Unable to fulfil its promises of fundamental political change and economic recovery after a century of failed transformation, the Transylvanian-led government’s failure marks the moment of another profound disappointment, which saw the public discourse on political order turn more and more towards strengthening the concept of ‘authority’.