Making Financial Instability Visible in Space as Well as Time

Abstract

The financial crises of the past decade unfolded at a time when many geographers were already exploring the spatiality of innovative financial structures and globalizing financial markets. The depth and extent of crises raised questions not only about their spatiality, but about their causes and impacts. Geographers were well positioned to discuss the former; but their explorations of these crises’ causes have largely centred on the workings of capitalism as a whole, not on financial processes within capitalism. Hyman Minsky's ‘financial instability hypothesis’, which provides a useful point of departure for understanding the links between financial processes and financial crisis, has been overlooked within economic geography. This chapter explains this lacuna and argues that financial instability should be incorporated into geographic financial discourse. So doing means making analytical space for real time and uncertainty. These elements are at the core of John Maynard Keynes’ ideas, on which Minsky's work builds. Real time and uncertainty are needed if money and credit – and in turn financial instability – are to play an essential analytical role. So bringing financial instability into spatial analysis requires a more Keynesian geography.