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How the asset-anything that can be controlled, traded, and capitalized as a revenue stream-has become the primary basis of technoscientific capitalism

Table of Contents

1 Introduction: Assetization and Technoscientific Capitalism
I Turning Knowledge into Assets
2 Patents as Assets: Intellectual Property Rights as Market Subjects and Objects
3 Datassets: Assetizing and Marketizing Personal Data
4 A Crisis for Cures? Tracing Assetization and Value in Biomedical Innovation
II Turning Infrastructure into Assets
5 High-Speed Contradictions: Spanish Railways between Economic Criticism and Political Defense
6 Turning Sunlit Rooftops and Windy Sites into Energy Assets
III Turning Nature into Assets
7 Expropriating the Future: Turning Ore Deposits and Legitimate Expectations into Assets
8 From Commodity to Asset and Back Again: Property in the Capitalism of Varieties
9 Turning Nature into an Asset: Corporate Strategies for Rent-Seeking
IV Turning Publics into Assets
10 English Higher Education: From a Public Good to a Public Asset
11 Recidivists, Rough Sleepers, and the Unemployed as Financial Assets: Social Impact Bonds and the Creation of New Markets in Social Services
12 Conclusion: The Future of Assetization Studies

About the Author

Kean Birch is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at York University, Toronto. Fabian Muniesa is Senior Researcher at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI), a research center of Mines ParisTec.