The common places of alternative finance: assemblages, stoppages, and the political mobilisation of space

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article reflects on the role of physical settings in the inculcation of militant practices consonant with specific discourses. To do so, it draws on firsthand empirical information derived from a multi-sited ethnographic case study of an international cooperative that formed in Europe in the aftermath of the Euro crisis and deployed decentralised cryptocurrencies and alternative digital banking. Here, space is viewed as a relevant material resource that can be occupied and organised to enable the telling of a particular story of revolution, redistribution, and horizontality, while simultaneously helping to actualise that story. The materiality of space is thus related to its expressivity and seen as contributing to both an experience of militancy and the recurrence of the underlying political tale. This approach stresses reminiscence rather than becoming; the existential dimensions of interaction and affection rather than the ontological one of ever-evolving sociotechnical assemblages. On such grounds, the article proposes the concept of stoppage to account for the repetition of specific spatial dispositions that configure extra-institutional immersive environments.