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Frontier financialization: Urban infrastructure in the United Kingdom

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  • Paul Langley

Abstract

This article contributes to critical social scientific understanding of the significance of state power to the furtherance of the financialization of socioeconomic life. Drawing on the poststructural theories of power of Gilles Deleuze and Michel Foucault, the concepts of “diagram†and “dispositif†are developed to foreground how changes in modalities and relations of power are manifest in shifting governmental rationalities and contingent policy interventions that attempt to advance financialization processes. The article's conceptual claims are illustrated through an analysis of the financialization of urban infrastructure that focuses on the United Kingdom's first ever National Infrastructure Plan (NIP), enacted between 2010 and 2015. The NIP is shown to have marked a step†change in the UK state's approach to the governing of ostensibly public urban infrastructure, one that sought to reconfigure privately owned, market†operated, and privately financed infrastructures as a “new asset class†to be prospected for value by global investors. As the NIP problematized the private debt financing of urban infrastructure, it was through the diagram of governmental planning that the apparent limit points of financialization processes were identified and confronted, and through specific dispositif that attempts were made to extend the frontier of financialization.

Suggested Citation

  • Paul Langley, 2018. "Frontier financialization: Urban infrastructure in the United Kingdom," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 172-184, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecanth:v:5:y:2018:i:2:p:172-184
    DOI: 10.1002/sea2.12115
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    9. World Bank, 2012. "Transformation through Infrastructure," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 26768.
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    Cited by:

    1. Yun Li & Ming Xu & Juncheng Dai & Zhenshan Yang & Zhe Cheng, 2023. "Examining the Impact of Infrastructure Financialization on Uneven Regional Development: Evidence from China," Land, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-12, March.
    2. Ana Flavia Badue & Florbela Ribeiro, 2018. "Gendered redistribution and family debt: The ambiguities of a cash transfer program in Brazil," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 261-273, June.
    3. Aaron Z. Pitluck & Fabio Mattioli & Daniel Souleles, 2018. "Finance beyond function: Three causal explanations for financialization," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 157-171, June.
    4. Le Thanh Ha, 2024. "The nexus of financialization and circularity: Evidence from European economies," Energy & Environment, , vol. 35(2), pages 950-985, March.

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