assetizationeconomic rentnatural capitalpatents and personal datatechnoscientific capitalism
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Abstract (AI)
How the asset—anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. In this book, scholars from a range of disciplines argue that the asset—meaning anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream—has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism. An asset can be an object or an experience, a sum of money or a life form, a patent or a bodily function. A process of assetization prevails, imposing investment and return as the key rationale, and overtaking commodification and its speculative logic. Although assets can be bought and sold, the point is to get a durable economic rent from them rather than make a killing on the market. Assetization examines how assets are constructed and how a variety of things can be turned into assets, analyzing the interests, activities, skills, organizations, and relations entangled in this process. The contributors consider the assetization of knowledge, including patents, personal data, and biomedical innovation; of infrastructure, including railways and energy; of nature, including mineral deposits, agricultural seeds, and “natural capital”; and of publics, including such public goods as higher education and “monetizable social ills.” Taken together, the chapters show the usefulness of assetization as an analytical tool and as an element in the critique of capitalism. The open access edition of this book was made possible by generous funding from Arcadia – a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. Contributors Thomas Beauvisage, Kean Birch, Veit Braun, Natalia Buier, Béatrice Cointe, Paul Robert Gilbert, Hyo Yoon Kang, Les Levidow, Kevin Mellet, Sveta Milyaeva, Fabian Muniesa, Alain Nadaï, Daniel Neyland, Victor Roy, James W. Williams
Key Findings
1
Assetization is shown to involve intertwined interests, activities, skills, organizations, and relations that construct diverse things as economically exploitable assets.
2
Assetization prioritizes securing durable economic rent through investment and return, rather than relying on commodification and short-term speculative gains.
3
Assets—anything controllable, tradable, and capitalizable as revenue—are presented as the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism.
4
The book analyzes how knowledge, infrastructure, nature, and publics—including patents, personal data, railways, seeds, higher education, and social ills—are transformed into assets.
5
The contributors establish assetization as both an analytical tool for studying capitalism and a basis for critiquing its expansion.
Research Object
The asset as a form of economic and technoscientific entity (anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream)
Research Subject
how diverse things are constructed and transformed into assets to generate durable economic rent in technoscientific capitalism
Publication Details
Publication Date
2020-07-14
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