Download Capitals of Capital and Consumption: Tracing

Capitals of Capital and Consumption: Tracing the causal
linkages between high end finance and high end shopping.
Start date: 1 April 2010
Background: The crisis that started in 2007 has put in sharp relief the interconnectedness
between finance and consumption. The feedback loops through which the Capitals of
Capital (as economic historian Youssef Cassis has called International Financial Centres)
have been hit by the crisis are both direct and indirect. Less economic activity means less
employment, less bonuses, less consumption and hence less tax incomes. While there is
sufficient anecdotal synchronic and diachronic evidence that concentrations of financial
activities overlap with concentrations of high end consumption, the exact linkages
between the two have been neglected. The aim of this research project is to fill that gap,
by answering questions such as: to what extent do high finance and high end
consumption overlap? How have both reacted to the crisis? And how can we explain the
differences in overlap and change between IFCs?
Key Themes and Foci: This project brings together a number of literatures, themes and
perspectives. First, it builds upon a body of work that is geographical in nature and deals
with the development, reproduction over time and decline of IFCs. Pertinent questions
here are how have IFCs seen their relative standing change over time? What impact do
regulatory context and institutional setting have? How are relative standings affected by
technological change and wider geopolitical developments. Financial geography is one of
the new areas in geography that the University of Amsterdam aims to further develop.
This project fits into that aim.
Second, it develops further a strand of research that focuses on the differentiated
geographies of consumption. While the emphasis in that literature on mass consumption,
this project amends that by focusing on the spatial distribution of high end consumption.
The knowledge base at Amsterdam on which this project builds is Professor
Kloostermans historical geographical project on the communities of practices
undergirding the urban concentrations of cultural industries.
Third, it addresses questions that are pertinent to the wider research tradition of state
restructuring, discussed respectively as variegated capitalism, scaling and rescaling and
globalization in the subfield of political geography, in the sense that the dynamics of both
finance and consumption are partly induced by regulatory initiatives and responses and as
such reflect the politics of state restructuring.
Case Studies: In order to render the intricacies of the linkages between finance and
consumption amenable to a single 4-year research project we aim to combine quantitative
mapping with qualitative explanations. The mapping exercise will be based on a
reworking of third party research as well as analysis of public datasets. The explanatory
exercise requires further delimitations. Using insights from comparative political
economy and comparative historical sociology a comparative three case research design
suggests itself, consisting of an Anglo-American IFC with high levels of wealth and
income inequalities, a declining middle class and a court-tradition (i.e. London), a
European IFC with low levels of income and wealth inequalities, a stable middle class
and a Calvinist heritage (Amsterdam) and an Asian IFC with increasing levels of income
and wealth inequalities, a rising middle class as well as a Confucian heritage
(Singapore/Hong Kong). In all cases the aftermath, unfolding and impacts of the crisis
and their relationships to changing patterns of wealth, power and high-end consumption
merit careful scrutiny.
A further delimitations concerns the high end consumption markets that will be selected
for in depth study: i.e. high end watch outlets, art markets and high end fashion outlets.
As a cursory glance at magazines such as FT's How to Spend It or Monocle suggests,
these are seen to be and are presented as eponymous to luxury brands and may provide
the best access to the underlying mechanisms.
Methodologies: The research question will be addressed through a mixed theory / mixed
methodology approach, consisting of intensive and extensive research methods as well as
quantitative and qualitative datasets drawing on a combination (with the exact foci and
strategies to be specified):
1. Quantitative analysis: mapping correlations between financial services
concentrations and high end consumption footprints, retail networks and
other market data.
2. Newspaper report (i.e. discourse) analysis: tracing the global dynamics of
high end consumption through a diachronic study of reports in newspapers
like the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.
3. Literature review: embedding the project in the three bodies of literature
mentioned above.
4. Cultural analysis: describing and analyzing the overlapping narratives
being told about centers of finance and centers of consumption in
exclusive magazine like FT's How to Spend It and Monocle as well as ads
in the FT and the WSJ and other ‘local' media.
5. Participant Observation: phenomenologies of shopping areas (studyingby-walking-around) and areas of finance in the three selected cases,
determining the overlap in space and implied audiences.
6. Semi-structured interviews with marketers, municipal officials, selected
financial service employees, magazine editors, luxury brand fair
organizers and representatives of luxury brands.
7. Event studies on a per case basis related to the effects of the crisis and the
wider spatial shift in both finance and high end consumption caused by it.