International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2021

 

From economic to social financialisation: the rise of sociological studies of financialisation and their prospect

(Abstract)

 

AI Yun and XIANG Jinglin

 

With financial systems becoming intertwined and financial markets expanding around the world, more and more goods, activities and services are incorperated in financial transactions and systems, and there appears a significant shift from economic to social financialisation in recent years. The logic of finance has penetrated in people’s daily life and become the logic underlying their social exchanges and interactions. The issue of financialisation attracts more and more attention from social scientists outside economics. The article revisits the conceptualisations and definitions of economic financialisation by such schools as Marxist political economy and neo-classic economics, their measures and analyses of financialisation and its economic and social effects. Based on the effort, the authors explore and envision the approaches and themes in future studies in the perspectives of sociology and China’s experiences in development by drawing the past decade’s studies of financialisation in such disciplines as economic sociology and emerging practices in financial markets.