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The poverty of fintech? Psychometrics, credit infrastructures, and the limits of financialization
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Bernards, Nicholas (2019) The poverty of fintech? Psychometrics, credit infrastructures, and the limits of financialization. Review of International Political Economy, 26 (5). pp. 815-838. doi:10.1080/09692290.2019.1597753 ISSN 0969-2290.
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WRAP-poverty-fintech-psychometrics-credit-infrastructures-financialization-Bernards-2019.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (743Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1080/09692290.2019.1597753
Abstract
It is increasingly common to claim that innovative financial technologies (‘fintech’) will enable ever-wider access to credit. Previous critical accounts have often linked the development of fintech to processes of financialization. However, these arguments rarely take account of the uneven and highly limited character of ‘financial inclusion’ in practice. Drawing on engagements with science and technology studies and historical materialist political economy, this article advances an approach emphasizing processes of abstraction from productive activities, mediated through particular infrastructures, as core elements of financial accumulation. Seen in this light, psychometrics in particular and alternative credit data more broadly can be seen as flawed efforts to confront three sets of limits – (1) the necessarily reductive character of abstract framings, and the consequent challenges posed by their encounter with complex processes in practice, (2) the ways that systems for credit scoring interact with the infrastructures of existing financial systems, and (3) the difficulty of realizing financial profits in the context of widespread precarious livelihoods. Looking at alternative forms of credit data from this angle offers a way of grasping the truncated and uneven rollout of fintech, and hence of prompting more critical reflections about the limits to processes of financialization.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HG Finance | ||||||
| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > School for Cross-faculty Studies Faculty of Arts > School for Cross-faculty Studies > Global Sustainable Development |
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| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Financialization , Finance -- Technological innovations, International finance -- Statistics, Credit scoring systems | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | Review of International Political Economy | ||||||
| Publisher: | Routledge | ||||||
| ISSN: | 0969-2290 | ||||||
| Official Date: | 23 May 2019 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Volume: | 26 | ||||||
| Number: | 5 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 815-838 | ||||||
| DOI: | 10.1080/09692290.2019.1597753 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Reuse Statement (publisher, data, author rights): | This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Review of International Political Economy on 23/05/2019, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09692290.2019.1597753 | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
| Date of first compliant deposit: | 19 February 2019 | ||||||
| Date of first compliant Open Access: | 23 November 2020 | ||||||
| Related URLs: |
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