Legal geographies of finance Editors' Introduction

Knuth, Sarah; Potts, Shaina

doi:10.1177/0308518x15613356

Cited by 23 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…However, the products directly provided by both are mostly constituted, in a literal sense, of abstract textual and numerical "code." Of primary importance in finance are private contracts (Haberly and Wójcik, 2017a;Knuth and Potts, 2015;Pistor, 2013). Like software, these contracts can, at least in commonlaw based systems, be crafted in almost unlimited innovative ways so long as they remain within the bounds of public law and regulation-which are themselves mutable via choice of jurisdictional arena and political lobbying.…”

Section: Finance As a Digital Platform Industry: A Global Financial Network Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Similarly, geographers (e.g. Roberts, 1994;Coe et al, 2014;Haberly and Wójcik, 2017a;Knuth and Potts, 2015) have long emphasized that the abstract legal-regulatory dimension of finance must be structured through real places-even if only law offices housing the documentation of "brass plate" companies. In this respect, the key question is how this "paper" geography of finance will interact with the growing importance of its "virtual" geography.…”

Section: Finance As a Digital Platform Industry: A Global Financial Network Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Indeed, the most influential legal frameworks (e.g. New York) provide the basis for global financial law export industries (Knuth and Potts, 2015).…”

Section: Finance As a Digital Platform Industry: A Global Financial Network Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

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Asset Management as a Digital Platform Industry: A Global Financial Network Perspective

et al. 2018

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While contemporary technological disruption is increasingly conceptualized in terms of the logic and paradoxes of the digital platform economy, discussions of "FinTech" have only engaged to a limited extent with these debates-particularly from an economic geographic standpoint. Here we fill this gap by proposing an adapted Global Financial Network (GFN) framework for conceptualizing the organizational and geographic logic of the digital platform economy in finance, and applying it to examine the impact of the digital platform model on asset management. As we will show, asset management is being profoundly disrupted by what we dub digital asset management platforms-or DAMPs-which encompass services including index fund and ETF provision, roboadvising, and analytics and trading support. Like other digital platforms, DAMPs do not so much leverage technology to enhance their competitiveness within markets, as to radically restructure the market itself. Also, like other platforms, their rise has produced a winner-take-all paradox of centralization through democratization that defies predictions of technology-enabled industry decentralization. However, the logic and implications of the rise of DAMPs diverges, in other respects, from non-financial digital platforms, as finance has long possessed an informational intensity and regulatory and organizational fluidity characteristic of the digital platform economy. Consequently, the digital platform model has mostly developed endogenously in asset management through incremental innovation by major financial firms-in a process that has reinforced the position of leading incumbent asset management centers, and above all New York-rather than being introduced from the outside by upstart technology firms and clusters." [BlackRock's Aladdin] has within its memory a vast history of the past 50 years -not just financial -but all kinds of events. What it does is constantly take things that happen in the present day and compares them to events in the past. Out of the millions and millions of correlations -Aladdin then spots possible disasters -possible futures -and moves the investments to avoid that future happening. I can't over-emphasise how powerful Blackrock's system is in shaping the world -it's more powerful in some respects than traditional politics…But it's boring. And there is no story. Just patterns…It is the modern world of power -and it's incredibly boring. Nothing to film, run by a cautious man who is in no way a wolf of Wall Street. It's how power works today. It hides in plain sight -through sheer boringness and dullness." -Adam Curtis chain ledgers (Economist, 2018a;Swan, 2015).

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Section: Finance As a Digital Platform Industry: A Global Financial Network Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Finance As a Digital Platform Industry: A Global Financial Network Perspectivementioning

confidence: 99%

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Asset Management as a Digital Platform Industry: A Global Financial Network Perspective

et al. 2018

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“…The heated debates that ensued expose an important characteristic of transnational payment geographies: far from being continuous, these payments are carefully divided into discrete segments, categorized by changing ownership, agency and jurisdiction. A small, but growing body of scholarship has addressed relationships among law, finance, and geography (see Knuth and Potts, 2016). Christophers (2014Christophers ( , 2015 shows how law defines the geographic extent of markets.…”

Section: Mapping Paymentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

(Re-)writing markets: Law and contested payment geographies

Potts

2018

Environ Plan A

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While many emphasize the supposed frictionlessness and instantaneity of global financial flows, economic geographers have done important work placing globalization in concrete practices and spaces. Yet, cross-border payment transactions, which are constitutive of transnational markets, remain understudied. In this paper, I use creditor litigation against Argentina as a lens through which to explore material geographies of transnational financial payments. This litigation sheds light on the fundamental role of law (especially US common law) in structuring most major payment transactions today. Payment “flows” are not continuous at all, but rather legally divided into discrete spatial segments—and remapping these divisions, via litigation, has become a focal point of struggle between creditors and debtors, as well as among financiers. Fierce debates over contracts and their interpretation have been central in these battles. Furthermore, these financial geographies remain inextricably entangled not only with business actors, but with legal and political actors as well—law anchors economic geographies in state spaces and (often contradictory) state interests at a variety of scales.

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“…Legal geography is on the rise. Critical geographers’ increased scrutiny towards legal frameworks stems not only from their general interest in law, but also from the discipline’s deep engagement with neoliberalism (e.g., Knuth & Potts, 2016; Teresa, 2016). Beginning with David Harvey’s pathbreaking works in the 1970s, critical geography has ceaselessly documented the central role of space in the neoliberal political economy.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Trespassing on the Law: Critical legal engineering as a strategy for action research

Kusiak

2021

Area

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This paper proposes critical legal engineering (CLE) as a new methodology for legal‐geographic action research. While legal geography is on the rise, geographers rarely participate in legal or judicial process, and when they do – for example, as court expert witnesses – they merely respond to the pre‐established agendas of the legal system. I argue that legal geographers’ knowledge on the nature of law and its relations with society is a source of power that could allow them to set legal agendas and pluralise legal discussions. CLE assumes that legal geographers can put forward technical legal arguments, thus using law’s own tools to implement normative agendas implied in critical research. However, CLE demands a dialectical attitude that preserves the contradiction between political ends and legal technology – while pursuing both of them at the same time. As I show, CLE can realise critical agendas in three ways. First, it co‐opts the legitimacy provided by the legal system, lending it to the agendas that are otherwise perceived as “too radical.” Second, elevated by the law these radical agendas may gain greater power to influence political‐economic realities even before the legal outcomes are decided. Finally, CLE draws out of “technical” legal discussions into the heat of the public debate, thus politicising the law. Having developed this methodological proposition in the course of my research on urban movements, I illustrate it with the strategy of Berlin's campaign Deutsche Wohnen & Co. Enteignen (DWE), which has crafted a legal argumentation based on Article 15 of the German Constitution to pursue re‐municipalisation (or de‐privatisation) of housing.

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Legal geographies of finance Editors' Introduction

Cited by 23 publications

References 16 publications

Asset Management as a Digital Platform Industry: A Global Financial Network Perspective

Asset Management as a Digital Platform Industry: A Global Financial Network Perspective

(Re-)writing markets: Law and contested payment geographies

Trespassing on the Law: Critical legal engineering as a strategy for action research

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