Abstract

‘Material political economy’ is a perspective on finance (and similar markets) that takes all three of those words seriously. It probes the material foundations of finance; examines the politics of those foundations (both in the actor-network theory sense of ‘material politics’ and in the effect on finance’s materiality of the interaction between finance and the political system); and is attentive to the economics of finance, especially to finance’s mundane money-making.

The main case that will be examined is automated, ultrafast high-frequency trading or HFT , but two other cases will be discussed more briefly: decentralised cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and ethereum; and online advertising, especially realtime bidding.