Toward a Criminological Understanding of Financialization

Jordi González Guzmán

doi:10.5204/ijcjsd.1999

Abstract

This article weaves together the ascendancy of financial markets and the field of critical criminology. It argues that critical perspectives such as crimes of the powerful and crimes of globalization may benefit from analyzing financialization as a key economic and cultural transformation in today’s capitalism. The analysis of financialization is made through the literature that addresses the economic transformations of capitalist accumulation, thus framing finance capital in the post-Fordist regime of production. By using this perspective, this article develops the argument that the cyclical speculative waves of finance are not a congenital pathology of capitalism but its very mode of governmentality. Overall, this article claims the analytic potential of financialization studies to deepen our understanding of the social and environmental harms produced by powerful corporations and financial institutions.

Highlights

Vincenzo Ruggiero has often repeated that economists paid several visits to the field of criminology and that it is time for criminologists to return such visits (Ruggiero 2009, 2012, 2013)
Instead of seeking to fit old Fordist categories into the crimes committed by the economy and the powerful, criminology should focus on the ascendancy of financialization as a new mode of governmentality based on the harmful logic of speculation
It is a rationality that bubbles up to the surface when scholars interested in crimes of the powerful and crimes of globalization examine the economic conducts of powerful institutions

Summary

Introduction

Vincenzo Ruggiero has often repeated that economists paid several visits to the field of criminology and that it is time for criminologists to return such visits (Ruggiero 2009, 2012, 2013). Critical criminology may benefit from an excavation into the literature of financialization to connect the vast production of social and environmental harm with the dynamics of financial markets. This article claims the analytic potential of financialization studies to deepen our understanding of the social and environmental harms produced by powerful corporations and financial institutions. In building the dialogue between criminology and financialization, this article starts with a brief review of the existing criminological literature that has addressed finance capitalism as a crucial source to understanding the harmful consequences of the economy. Section two moves beyond the confines of criminology to define the notion of financialization and to introduce three different theoretical analyses underlying financialization studies. Section four outlines the harmful logic of finance capital by analyzing speculation as the very mode of governmentality of financial markets and is followed by a conclusion

Critical Criminology and the Rise of Finance

The Financial Revolution

The Crisis of the Law of Value

The Becoming Rent of Profit

Conclusion