期刊名称：Collegium : Studies across disciplines in the humanities and social sciences
印刷版ISSN：1796-2986
出版年度：2013
卷号：14
出版社：Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
摘要：The financ ial crisis that star ted in 2008 is explained in terms of a series of normalisations, which pooled together prime and subprime mor tgages , assets and debts , private and public debt. Such practices spread risk to the financial system as a whole and drastic ally reduced the information available. As a c onsequence, capital accumulation was achieved independently of whether the added value was real or vir tual. The financial crisis illustrates the limits of normal scienc e, that is, the dramatic simplification of the perception of the external world assoc iated with the adoption of narratives referring to a single scale and a single dimension. Reduced diversity in the input of information combined with the inherent instability of financial markets results in the systemic presence of high uncer tainty. In this situation, technical knowledge does not have the means to deal with, or control, the crisis and thus cannot guide decis ion making. The limits of tec hnical knowledge can be observed in the worsening of the crisis, which is affecting the whole economic sector and leading to increasing unemployment and political delegitimation throughout Europe. This paper suggests an alternative interpretation of the financial crisis based on the insights offered by hierarchy theor y. A multi-scale approach is used in order to identify the changing function of the financial sec tor at dif ferent scales of analysis and the transmission mechanis ms through which rent-seeking practices at the individual level result in systemic instability at the societal level
