Summary
This edited volume extensively explores the concept of “assetization” as a defining process in contemporary technoscientific capitalism. Assetization refers to transforming various entities that were not previously considered economic assets – such as objects, experiences, information, living beings, and people – and repositioning them as “assets” that can be controlled, traded, and leveraged to generate a durable stream of future revenues or economic rents.
Detailed
The interdisciplinary contributors analyze in depth how this process of assetization unfolds across different domains. They examine in detail the assetization of traditional areas of knowledge through mechanisms like patents, commodification of personal data, and financialization of biomedical innovations. Chapters also provide nuanced examinations of how infrastructure in the forms of railways and renewable energy systems are being reconstructed as investable assets. Additional contributions scrutinize emerging strategies for translating nature itself into tradable assets through the property rights systems applied to biodiversity and agriculture. The volume further explores assetization efforts extending market logics into new spheres by repositioning traditional public goods domains like higher education and social services as investable assets. Taken together, the contributors illustrate how assetization has become a pervasive and consequential driving logic within technoscientific capitalism today, exerting influence by imposing investment rationales and techniques of valuation onto expanding areas of social and economic life.
Citation and Licensing
Birch, K. and Muniesa, F. (Eds.). (2020). Assetization: Turning Things into Assets in Technoscientific Capitalism. The MIT Press. https://direct.mit.edu/books/oa-edited-volume/4848/AssetizationTurning-Things-into-Assets-in. Open access under CC BY-NC-ND license. The license can be viewed here: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License .
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