The nexus of finance and society is increasingly subject to critical attention from a range of commentators. The usual suspects are out in force – academics, politicians, and pundits – but now they are joined by a wider array of theorists and activists, playwrights, novelists, and artists.
Finance and Society is a fully independent and open-access journal, dedicated to bringing together diverse voices and generating new insights into how money and finance organise social life. Above all, our aim is to publish research in which the social substance of finance itself takes precedence over the canons and controversies of the academy.
In keeping with this overarching aim we have two ancillary goals for the journal. The first is to facilitate an extensive development of finance studies as a field. If present modes of inter-disciplinary exchange see cutting-edge research dispersed across a range of platforms, then our aim is to provide a place where these diverse research agendas can come together. We therefore welcome and invite contributions from scholars working with concepts or methods from political economy and the social studies of finance, as well those who draw on philosophical or aesthetic registers.
Our second and related goal is to facilitate an intensive development of the field. In particular, we invite and encourage research that grapples with synergies and tensions between new trends in finance studies. This includes (but is by no means limited to) the question of foundation and structure within the performativity paradigm, which we discuss in our inaugural editorial. How, for example, do representations of finance interact with the technical devices used by market participants and regulators, and what are the emergent structural properties of such interactions? The future of finance studies will be forged through questions like this, and we offer this new journal as a site where more such questions might be asked and answered.
Our first issue, ‘Hard Cash’, draws together scholars from a range of different fields to reflect on the nature of money in the context of contemporary finance. So, while Bob Jessop reflects on the money-form in cash, credit, and capital, Max Haiven explores the role of money as a medium for contemporary art practices.
Looking towards the future, Finance and Society is keen to receive articles, essays, and review articlesfrom any scholars exploring the social foundations or consequences of finance, see our Submission Guidelines. We also invite proposals for special issues and suggestions for fora on emerging themes or ground breaking new publications.
Finance and Society is very much a collective endeavour, tapping into an existing groundswell of bold post-disciplinary scholarship on the sociality of finance. Whether as reader or contributor, we hope you will see the journal as a collaborator in your own innovative explorations within the field.
Sincerely,
The editors
Angus Cameron (University of Leicester)
Nathan Coombs (University of Edinburgh)
Amin Samman (City University London)
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