This thesis explores the conditions of neoliberal power through the lens of finance as a specific form of social mediation. Based on the recognition that neoliberal financialisation is mediated by financial forms that are characterised by a high degree of abstraction, the conceptualisation proceeds through an immanent critique aimed at tracing out the social sources behind them. In doing so it seeks to uncover the deep structures that make neoliberal power possible yet which tend to remain misrecognised through the refraction produced by its apparent forms. The highly financialised economy of Sweden serves as the concrete case for examining this social phenomenon. Neoliberal power, it is argued, derives its strength from a deepening fetishism that naturalises the alienated condition of the globalised capital relation, ultimately rooted in the way that money absents its own social source. This absenting gives rise to the false but necessary narcissistic social consciousness upon which the process as a whole relies. The absence of a concept of money’s own absenting in theories of neoliberal power tends to reproduce the detotalizing abstraction that the process itself depends on, with implications for the possibility for transformative change.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA1/oai:DiVA.org:su-155294 |
| Date | January 2018 |
| Creators | Blomberg, Kalle |
| Publisher | Stockholms universitet, Sociologiska institutionen |
| Source Sets | DiVA Archive at Upsalla University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Student thesis, info:eu-repo/semantics/bachelorThesis, text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Rights | info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess |
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