Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-24T05:03:32.275Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Luhmann without society

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

Leon Wansleben
Leon Wansleben*
Affiliation:
London School of Economics, UK
*
Corresponding author: Leon Wansleben, Department ofSociology, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street,London, WC2A 2AE, United Kingdom. Email:[email protected]
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Konings successfully mobilizes social theory to demonstrate how various post-Marxist, Polanyian, and Foucauldian analyses fail to make sense of financialization and neoliberal governance as persistent societal formations. In their place he offers an analysis focused on the logic of ‘leverage’, which he sees as a source of not only private gain but also governmental power. I fully endorse Konings' turn to social theory, and in particular to the work of Niklas Luhmann. But I suggest that, since Konings leaves out Luhmann's broader theory of society, he can neither capture the tight couplings between the economy and politics presupposed in neoliberal governance, nor contextualize this governance as a ‘provincial’, US-centred project.

Type
Forum: Capital and time
Information
Finance and Society , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , 2018 , pp. 188 - 192
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© 2018 The Author(s)

References

Abbott, A. (2001) Chaos of Disciplines. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Agamben, G. (2005) State of Exception. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Baecker, D. (2007) Studien zur naechsten Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Baud, C. and Chiapello, E. (2017) Understanding the disciplinary aspects of neoliberal regulations: The case of credit-risk regulation under the Basel Accords. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 46(July): 3–23.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braun, B. and Huebner, M. (2018) Fiscal fault, financial fix? Capital Markets Union and the quest for macroeconomic stabilization in the euro area. Competition & Change, 22(2): 117–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carruthers, B. and Stinchcombe, A. (1999) The social structure of liquidity: Flexibility, markets, and states. Theory and Society, 28(3): 353–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Esposito, E. (2011) The Future of Futures: The Time of Money in Finance and Society. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Funke, M., Schularick, M. and Trebesch, C. (2016) Going to extremes: Politics after financial crises, 1870-2014. European Economic Review, 88(September): 227–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ingham, G. (2004) The Nature of Money. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Konings, M. (2011) The Development of American Finance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Konings, M. (2018) Capital and Time: For a New Critique of Neoliberal Reason. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Krippner, G. (2011) Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Luhmann, N. (1997) Die Gesellschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.Google Scholar
Rose, N. and Miller, P. (1992) Political power beyond the state: Problematics of government. British Journal of Sociology, 43(2): 173–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stockhammer, E. (2008) Some stylized facts on the finance-dominated accumulation regime. Competition & Change, 12(2): 184–202.Google Scholar
Streeck, W. (2014) Buying Time: The Delayed Crisis of Democratic Capitalism. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Taylor, A.M. (2015) Credit, financial stability, and the macroeconomy. Annual Review of Economics, 7(1): 309–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar