Chris Clarke | University of Warwick (original) (raw)

Journal Articles by Chris Clarke

Consumption Markets and Culture

The requirement to build economic resilience in people has become a concern for the UK Government... more The requirement to build economic resilience in people has become a concern for the UK Government, regulators, and the financial services industry. Transposed to the realm of financial literacy education (FLE), the resilience doctrine performs particular effects in relation to the naturalisation and individualisation of financial market relations. At the same time, it tends to speak of the inevitability of market failures and crashes. I argue that based on these features, the effect of the resilience doctrine is to mask the “empty promise” of FLE programmes: the irreconcilable gap between the empowerment discourse surrounding what such agendas are meant to achieve for ordinary people and the latter’s actual success in securing their security and well-being through financial markets. The paradoxical element of resilience talk is that it at once serves to further legitimise financial education attempts, while providing an opportune reason for failures judged even on its own terms.

In this article we explore Mark Carney’s place in the gendered political economy of British centr... more In this article we explore Mark Carney’s place in the gendered political economy of British central banking. We document the gendered narratives surrounding Carney around the time of his
appointment as Governor of the Bank of England, suggesting that they worked to naturalise certain gender constructions in finance. We show how Carney seemingly had the ability to successfully embody a combination of two ideal-types of masculinity: both ‘transnational business masculinity’
and ‘traditional bourgeois masculinity’. We argue this contributed to three depoliticising moves, each of which gain their strength in part from the naturalisation of masculinities in finance, while obfuscating important questions of gendered finance. To elucidate the latter, we highlight some of the gendered outcomes that are obscured by the furore surrounding Carney’s character, suggesting that the monetary and financial stability concerns of the Bank under his stewardship are likely to reproduce the uneven and exploitative relations of gendered finance.

Journal of Cultural Economy

In recent years, significant studies of finance have explored, on the one hand, the ways in which... more In recent years, significant studies of finance have explored, on the one hand, the ways in which a specific financial theory might act as a ‘performative utterance’ which through its use makes itself true and, on the other hand, the ways in which discourses and practices of finance might act as continuous performatives that constitute key categories of finance and the financial subject. On first glance, the idea of self-actualising financial theory might seem closer to J. L. Austin's original conception of the performative utterance. However, in this article, I argue for the need to reclaim the Austinian heritage for the broader and more generic understanding of performative finance as well. In this sense, I suggest, a return to Austin reveals the importance of maintaining a focus not only on the potential performance of financial theory, but also those discourses and practices of finance that make up the deeper layers of performativity. I use questions about the role of financial engineering in the sub-prime crisis to illustrate that it is only through a conception of performative finance as self-actualising theories and as discourses and practices that the often obscured layers of financial engineering in society can be fully understood.

International Political Sociology

The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invocations of trauma and... more The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invocations of trauma and traumatic imagery during the sub-prime crisis. We develop a pragmatic approach to performativity that foregrounds the ambiguity between the importance of performative utterances, on the one hand, and overlapping performativities that produce subjects capable of “hearing” such utterances, on the other. We argue that a performative effect of the traumatic narrative of the sub-prime crisis was to constitute it as “an event” with traumatic characteristics. Financial subjects came to anticipate the object of financial salvation through intervention to save the banks; and such a view worked to curtail the range of political possibilities that were thinkable. Lines of pragmatic resistance are suggested, which turn the logic of trauma toward broadly progressive ends. In this way, the political dimension of performativity is brought forward: if finance is performative, then this only invites the question of how we might perform it differently.

Politics

Hay's Political Analysis raises foundational issues for all social scientists, not least in its o... more Hay's Political Analysis raises foundational issues for all social scientists, not least in its outline for a via media, or middle way, between positivist and interpretivist social science. In this view, social science should be firmly grounded in empirical study but take seriously the notion that there is no privileged vantage point from which to generate dispassionate knowledge claims about the social world. This article asks whether this apparent via media is coherent and meaningfully captures what it means to be doing positivist and interpretivist social science without, so to speak, conceding too much ground to the other approach.

Papers by Chris Clarke

The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invo-cations of trauma an... more The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invo-cations of trauma and traumatic imagery during the sub-prime crisis. We develop a pragmatic approach to performativity that foregrounds the ambiguity between the importance of performative utterances, on the one hand, and overlapping performativities that produce subjects capable of ''hearing'' such utterances, on the other. We argue that a performative effect of the traumatic narrative of the sub-prime crisis was to constitute it as ''an event'' with traumatic characteristics. Financial subjects came to anticipate the object of financial salvation through intervention to save the banks; and such a view worked to curtail the range of political possibilities that were thinkable. Lines of pragmatic resistance are suggested, which turn the logic of trauma toward broadly progressive ends. In this way, the political dimension of performativity is brought forward: if finance is performative, then this only invites the question of how we might perform it differently. The subprime crisis that began in the summer of 2007 may rank as one of the most traumatic global developments since World War II. (Sinclair 2010:100) Financial Tsunami: The End of The World As We Knew It. (Engdahl 2008) Recent years have seen a growth of interest in the concept of performativity within IPE and related subject fields (Clark,). 1 Despite variations in approach, the basic proposition of the concept is that the use and extension of certain types of knowledge has a constitutive effect: markets are enacted, and financial subjects are produced through discursive repetition. In this article, we trace a line between ''thinner'' versions of the concept, most closely associated with J. L. Austin's notion of ''self actualizing'' statements, through to thicker versions that draw more directly from Judith Butler (1993:2) and her (related) idea that performativity operates through the ''reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains.'' At the heart of the conceptual discussion of performativity, we identify an essential ambiguity between the importance ⁄ centrality of performative utterances, on the one hand, and the role of overlapping performativities that culturally produce subjects capable of ''hearing'' such utterances, on the other. Rather 1 We thank several people for helpful comments at various stages in the development of this article, including

Consumption Markets and Culture

The requirement to build economic resilience in people has become a concern for the UK Government... more The requirement to build economic resilience in people has become a concern for the UK Government, regulators, and the financial services industry. Transposed to the realm of financial literacy education (FLE), the resilience doctrine performs particular effects in relation to the naturalisation and individualisation of financial market relations. At the same time, it tends to speak of the inevitability of market failures and crashes. I argue that based on these features, the effect of the resilience doctrine is to mask the “empty promise” of FLE programmes: the irreconcilable gap between the empowerment discourse surrounding what such agendas are meant to achieve for ordinary people and the latter’s actual success in securing their security and well-being through financial markets. The paradoxical element of resilience talk is that it at once serves to further legitimise financial education attempts, while providing an opportune reason for failures judged even on its own terms.

In this article we explore Mark Carney’s place in the gendered political economy of British centr... more In this article we explore Mark Carney’s place in the gendered political economy of British central banking. We document the gendered narratives surrounding Carney around the time of his
appointment as Governor of the Bank of England, suggesting that they worked to naturalise certain gender constructions in finance. We show how Carney seemingly had the ability to successfully embody a combination of two ideal-types of masculinity: both ‘transnational business masculinity’
and ‘traditional bourgeois masculinity’. We argue this contributed to three depoliticising moves, each of which gain their strength in part from the naturalisation of masculinities in finance, while obfuscating important questions of gendered finance. To elucidate the latter, we highlight some of the gendered outcomes that are obscured by the furore surrounding Carney’s character, suggesting that the monetary and financial stability concerns of the Bank under his stewardship are likely to reproduce the uneven and exploitative relations of gendered finance.

Journal of Cultural Economy

In recent years, significant studies of finance have explored, on the one hand, the ways in which... more In recent years, significant studies of finance have explored, on the one hand, the ways in which a specific financial theory might act as a ‘performative utterance’ which through its use makes itself true and, on the other hand, the ways in which discourses and practices of finance might act as continuous performatives that constitute key categories of finance and the financial subject. On first glance, the idea of self-actualising financial theory might seem closer to J. L. Austin's original conception of the performative utterance. However, in this article, I argue for the need to reclaim the Austinian heritage for the broader and more generic understanding of performative finance as well. In this sense, I suggest, a return to Austin reveals the importance of maintaining a focus not only on the potential performance of financial theory, but also those discourses and practices of finance that make up the deeper layers of performativity. I use questions about the role of financial engineering in the sub-prime crisis to illustrate that it is only through a conception of performative finance as self-actualising theories and as discourses and practices that the often obscured layers of financial engineering in society can be fully understood.

International Political Sociology

The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invocations of trauma and... more The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invocations of trauma and traumatic imagery during the sub-prime crisis. We develop a pragmatic approach to performativity that foregrounds the ambiguity between the importance of performative utterances, on the one hand, and overlapping performativities that produce subjects capable of “hearing” such utterances, on the other. We argue that a performative effect of the traumatic narrative of the sub-prime crisis was to constitute it as “an event” with traumatic characteristics. Financial subjects came to anticipate the object of financial salvation through intervention to save the banks; and such a view worked to curtail the range of political possibilities that were thinkable. Lines of pragmatic resistance are suggested, which turn the logic of trauma toward broadly progressive ends. In this way, the political dimension of performativity is brought forward: if finance is performative, then this only invites the question of how we might perform it differently.

Politics

Hay's Political Analysis raises foundational issues for all social scientists, not least in its o... more Hay's Political Analysis raises foundational issues for all social scientists, not least in its outline for a via media, or middle way, between positivist and interpretivist social science. In this view, social science should be firmly grounded in empirical study but take seriously the notion that there is no privileged vantage point from which to generate dispassionate knowledge claims about the social world. This article asks whether this apparent via media is coherent and meaningfully captures what it means to be doing positivist and interpretivist social science without, so to speak, conceding too much ground to the other approach.

The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invo-cations of trauma an... more The article provides a critical analysis of the performative effects of invo-cations of trauma and traumatic imagery during the sub-prime crisis. We develop a pragmatic approach to performativity that foregrounds the ambiguity between the importance of performative utterances, on the one hand, and overlapping performativities that produce subjects capable of ''hearing'' such utterances, on the other. We argue that a performative effect of the traumatic narrative of the sub-prime crisis was to constitute it as ''an event'' with traumatic characteristics. Financial subjects came to anticipate the object of financial salvation through intervention to save the banks; and such a view worked to curtail the range of political possibilities that were thinkable. Lines of pragmatic resistance are suggested, which turn the logic of trauma toward broadly progressive ends. In this way, the political dimension of performativity is brought forward: if finance is performative, then this only invites the question of how we might perform it differently. The subprime crisis that began in the summer of 2007 may rank as one of the most traumatic global developments since World War II. (Sinclair 2010:100) Financial Tsunami: The End of The World As We Knew It. (Engdahl 2008) Recent years have seen a growth of interest in the concept of performativity within IPE and related subject fields (Clark,). 1 Despite variations in approach, the basic proposition of the concept is that the use and extension of certain types of knowledge has a constitutive effect: markets are enacted, and financial subjects are produced through discursive repetition. In this article, we trace a line between ''thinner'' versions of the concept, most closely associated with J. L. Austin's notion of ''self actualizing'' statements, through to thicker versions that draw more directly from Judith Butler (1993:2) and her (related) idea that performativity operates through the ''reiterative power of discourse to produce the phenomena that it regulates and constrains.'' At the heart of the conceptual discussion of performativity, we identify an essential ambiguity between the importance ⁄ centrality of performative utterances, on the one hand, and the role of overlapping performativities that culturally produce subjects capable of ''hearing'' such utterances, on the other. Rather 1 We thank several people for helpful comments at various stages in the development of this article, including