Course Description:
Finance and security are conventionally studied separately by the different disciplines of international political economy (IPE)/ modern finance and security studies/ international relations (IR). Nonetheless these have been shown to profess intimate interconnections, such as the instrumental use of finance in the dollar diplomacy of the early 20th century or the insecurity of financial speculation traditionally pointed out by IPE, contrary to the claims of modern finance (de Goede, 2010). If the finance-security relation here remains somewhat implicit, a growing cross-disciplinary literature has begun to explicitly reflect the manifold and complex connections between finance and security. Post-9/11 and post-financial crisis the merging of finance and security logics has been conceived either as a securitisation (in the Copenhagen sense of the term) of finance or as a financialisation of security. In addition, financial security carries a distinct meaning as pledge/ collateral and financial commodity that is at the root of the financial term of securitisation, making the question of the correspondence of political and financial security a key area of enquiry. The first of its kind, the course presents the state-of-the-art of the finance-security literature and features guest lectures by some of the leading scholars in this emerging field. The lectures are organized around central concepts (such as 'sovereignty', 'collateral', 'securitisation', 'value' etc) that will be explored in terms of their cross-disciplinary reach and capital. The course will also offer opportunities to discuss own research.
The deadline for applications is 12 August 2015. Later applications may be accepted depending on available spaces.
Deadlines:
Application deadline: 12 August 2015
Brief research proposal: 6 September 2015
Essay hand-in deadline: 16 November 2015
Requirements:
Participants are asked to submit a brief research proposal related to a current or future project (approximately 600 words) by 6 September 2015. The proposal should be contextualized in the course literature. The course awards an optional 5 ECTS credits upon satisfactory completion of an essay of 4000-5000 words by Monday, 16 November 2015. 3 essay questions will be provided, alternatively a question can be proposed for approval by the organizers by 15 October 2015. Essay submission should be indicated in the application, but is not binding.
Admission:
The deadline for applications is 20th July 2015 . Please fill in the application form. Applicants should specify the topic of their research under 'Research interests' and elaborate under 'Other comments'. PhD candidates receive priority but other graduate students and post-docs from relevant disciplines may also apply. Current members of the Research School on Peace and Conflict only need to register.
There is no participation fee but participants are expected to cover their own travel and accommodation cost. Five stipends for basic accommodation at the near-by Anker Hotel are available for PhD students who do not have access to funding for such course participation through their universities.
Applicants will be notified about the outcome of their application within a week after the deadline. PhD candidates who apply prior to the deadline may request an early evaluation of their application in an e-mail to Kristoffer@prio.no if necessary in order to make early travel arrangements.
Course Literature:
Indicative reading list:
Aitken R (2011) Financializing Security: Political Prediction Markets and the Commodification of Uncertainty. Security Dialogue, 42(2): 123-141.
Amicelle A (2011) Towards a 'New' Political Economy of Financial Surveillance, Security Dialogue, 42(2): 161-178.
Amoore L (2011) Data Derivatives: On the Emergence of a Security Risk Calculus for Our Times. Theory, Culture & Society, 28(6): 24-43
Boy N (2015, forthcoming) Sovereign Safety, Security Dialogue
Boy N (2014) 'The Backstory of the Risk-free Asset: How Government Debt Became 'Safe'' in Goodhart C, D Gabor, I Ertuerk, J Vestergaard (eds) Central Banking at a Crossroads. London: Anthem Press, 177-178
Boy N, Burgess JB, Leander A (2011) The Global Governance of Security and Finance: Introduction to the Special Issue. Security Dialogue 42(2): 115–22
Cooper, M, Konings M (2015) Contingency and Foundation: Rethinking Money, Debt and Finance After the Crisis. S A Q: The South Atlantic Quarterly, 114(2): 239-250
Gabor D (2012) The Power of Collateral: The ECB and Geographies of Bank Funding. Social Science Research Network.
Gabor D, Ban C (2015, forthcoming) Banking on the State: the European Crisis as a Crisis of Shadow Banking. Journal of Common Market Studies
Gilbert E, Ponder C (2014) Between Tragedy and Farce: 9/11 Compensation and the Value of Life and Death. Antipode, 46 (2): 404-425
de Goede M (2005) Virtue, Fortune and Faith: A Genealogy of Finance. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
de Goede M (2010) Financial Security. In: Burgess JP (ed) The Routledge Handbook of New Security Studies. London and New York: Routledge, 100-109
de Goede M (2012) Speculative Security: The Politics of Pursuing Terrorist Monies. London: University of Minnesota Press.
Konings M. (2011). Money as Icon. Theory and Event: an online journal of political theory, 14(3), 1-14.
Langenohl A (2015) Collateralized Polities: The Transformation of Trust in Sovereign Debt in the Wake of the Eurozone Crisis. Behemoth: A Journal on Civilization, 8(1): 67-90
Langley P (2015) Liquidity Lost: The Governance of the Global Financial Crisis. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Langley P (2013) Toxic Assets, Turbulence and Biopolitical Security: Governing the Crisis of Global Financial Circulation. Security Dialogue 44 (2): 111-126
Lobo-Guerrero L (2011) Insuring Security: Biopolitics, Security and Risk. Abingdon: Routledge.
Lobo-Guerrero L (2012) Insuring War: Sovereignty, Security and Risk. London and New York: Routledge.
Martin R (2007) An Empire of Indifference: American War and the Financial Logic of Risk Management. Durham: Duke University Press.
Walker J, Cooper M (2011) Genealogies of Resilience: From Systems Ecology to the Political Economy of Crisis Adaptation. Security Dialogue, 42(2): 143-160
The full reading list will be available by the end of August. All core readings will be provided to participants via dropbox.