IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envira/v54y2022i3p493-507.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The accountancy of marketisation: Fictional markets in housing land supply

Author

Listed:
  • Quintin Bradley

Abstract

This article investigates the performative role of accountancy in embedding market mechanisms in public services. Drawing on the work of Karl Polanyi, it argues that marketisation can be understood as a work of calculative modelling in which the fiction of a self-regulating market is propagated through the concealment of the social and political practices on which it depends. Exploring this thesis in the marketisation of housing land supply, the article provides a forensic study of an accountancy procedure called the Housing Delivery Test that modelled an ideal housing market in the English land-use planning system. The study points to the importance of Polanyi's analysis in theorising the performativity of calculative practices in the project of marketisation, not as creating the economy they describe but in fashioning a fictional market.

Suggested Citation

  • Quintin Bradley, 2022. "The accountancy of marketisation: Fictional markets in housing land supply," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(3), pages 493-507, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:54:y:2022:i:3:p:493-507
    DOI: 10.1177/0308518X211061583
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X211061583
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0308518X211061583?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Goodwin, Geoff, 2018. "Rethinking the double movement: expanding the frontiers of Polanyian analysis in the Global South," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 87253, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    2. Antoine Paccoud & Markus Hesse & Tom Becker & Magdalena Górczyńska, 2022. "Land and the housing affordability crisis: landowner and developer strategies in Luxembourg’s facilitative planning context," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(10), pages 1782-1799, October.
    3. Jerome Maucourant & Sebastien Plociniczak, 2013. "The Institution, the Economy and the Market: Karl Polanyi's Institutional Thought for Economists," Review of Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 25(3), pages 512-531, July.
    4. Kurunmaki, Liisa & Mennicken, Andrea & Miller, Peter, 2016. "Quantifying, economising, and marketising: democratising the social sphere?," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 67549, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Laurence Murphy, 2020. "Performing calculative practices: residual valuation, the residential development process and affordable housing," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(9), pages 1501-1517, October.
    6. Quintin Bradley, 2021. "The financialisation of housing land supply in England," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(2), pages 389-404, February.
    7. Murray, Cameron K., 2020. "Time is money: How landbanking constrains housing supply," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(C).
    8. Laurence Murphy, 2014. "'Houston, we've got a problem': The Political Construction of a Housing Affordability Metric in New Zealand," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(7), pages 893-909, October.
    9. Geoff Goodwin, 2018. "Rethinking the Double Movement: Expanding the Frontiers of Polanyian Analysis in the Global South," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 49(5), pages 1268-1290, September.
    10. Jessica Ferm & Mike Raco, 2020. "Viability Planning, Value Capture and the Geographies of Market-Led Planning Reform in England," Planning Theory & Practice, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 21(2), pages 218-235, June.
    11. Donald MacKenzie, 2006. "An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262134608, December.
    12. Richard Waldron, 2019. "Financialization, Urban Governance and the Planning System: Utilizing ‘Development Viability’ as a Policy Narrative for the Liberalization of Ireland's Post‐Crash Planning System," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 685-704, July.
    13. Michel Callon & Fabian Muniesa, 2005. "Economic markets as calculative collective devices," Post-Print halshs-00087477, HAL.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Iain White, 2020. "Rigour and rigour mortis? Planning, calculative rationality, and forces of stability and change," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 57(14), pages 2885-2900, November.
    2. Richardson, Benjamin Felix, 2022. "Finance, food, and future urban zones: The failure of flexible development in Auckland, New Zealand," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    3. Möllering, Guido, 2009. "Market constitution analysis: A new framework applied to solar power technology markets," MPIfG Working Paper 09/7, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    4. McFall, Liz, 2015. "Is digital disruption the end of health insurance? Some thoughts on the devising of risk," economic sociology. perspectives and conversations, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, vol. 17(1), pages 32-44.
    5. Walter, Christian, 2016. "The financial Logos: The framing of financial decision-making by mathematical modelling," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(C), pages 597-604.
    6. Antoine Paccoud & Markus Hesse & Tom Becker & Magdalena Górczyńska, 2022. "Land and the housing affordability crisis: landowner and developer strategies in Luxembourg’s facilitative planning context," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(10), pages 1782-1799, October.
    7. Pollock, Neil & D’Adderio, Luciana, 2012. "Give me a two-by-two matrix and I will create the market: Rankings, graphic visualisations and sociomateriality," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 37(8), pages 565-586.
    8. Hannah Stokes-Ramos, 2023. "Rethinking Polanyi's double movement through participatory justice: Land use planning in Puerto Rico," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 55(8), pages 1970-1988, November.
    9. Callon, Michel, 2009. "Civilizing markets: Carbon trading between in vitro and in vivo experiments," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(3-4), pages 535-548, April.
    10. Quintin Bradley, 2021. "The financialisation of housing land supply in England," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(2), pages 389-404, February.
    11. Christian Berndt & Marion Werner & Víctor Ramiro Fernández, 2020. "Postneoliberalism as institutional recalibration: Reading Polanyi through Argentina’s soy boom," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 52(1), pages 216-236, February.
    12. Millo, Yuval, 2007. "From green fields to green felt tables and back: the origin of index-based derivatives," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 36124, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Wendy Currie & Jonathan Jm Seddon, 2022. "Exploring technological instantiation of regulatory practices in entangled financial markets," Post-Print hal-03599145, HAL.
    14. Frances Brill, 2022. "Governing investors and developers: Analysing the role of risk allocation in urban development," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 59(7), pages 1499-1517, May.
    15. Modell, Sven & Vinnari, Eija & Lukka, Kari, 2017. "On the virtues and vices of combining theories: The case of institutional and actor-network theories in accounting research," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 62-78.
    16. Colin Filer & Sango Mahanty & Lesley Potter, 2020. "The FPIC Principle Meets Land Struggles in Cambodia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-21, February.
    17. Williams, James W., 2013. "Regulatory technologies, risky subjects, and financial boundaries: Governing ‘fraud’ in the financial markets," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 38(6), pages 544-558.
    18. Peter Phibbs & Nicole Gurran, 2021. "The role and significance of planning in the determination of house prices in Australia: Recent policy debates," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(3), pages 457-479, May.
    19. Vollmer, Hendrik & Mennicken, Andrea & Preda, Alex, 2009. "Tracking the numbers: Across accounting and finance, organizations and markets," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(5), pages 619-637, July.
    20. Roberts, John & Jones, Megan, 2009. "Accounting for self interest in the credit crisis," Accounting, Organizations and Society, Elsevier, vol. 34(6-7), pages 856-867, August.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envira:v:54:y:2022:i:3:p:493-507. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.