The politics of assetization: from devices of calculation to devices of obligation

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article develops a new theoretical perspective on the politics of financialization with housing as its specific case. The argument uses the recent debate on assets and assetization in the Social Studies of Finance as a starting point. In this debate, the asset is introduced vis-à-vis the commodity as a fruitful analytical category. The article argues that the suggested shift from the commodity to the asset allows for a novel understanding of the politics of financialization if it is accompanied by a parallel shift from ‘devices of calculation’ to what is here termed ‘devices of obligation’. Devices of obligation address the politics that produce the durability that the asset requires. Accounting for such politics of obligation offers a nuanced comprehension of the material, infrastructural, legal, and moral forms of binding time that are crucial for financialized revenues. In order to develop this theoretical framework, the article links insights from the Social Studies of Finance to the classical sociological theory of obligation in the work of Marcel Mauss. This allows a more granular understanding of the political dimension of financialization beyond the state. The analytical viability of this theoretical perspective is demonstrated through a case-study of the processes of the financialization of housing in Spain shortly before the financial crisis of 2008.