Repoliticizing financial risk

Abstract

This article aims to repoliticize modern financial risk management by offering a genealogical reading of its contested religious and cultural history. While identifying, calculating, and selling risk is at the heart of the modern financial markets, the normative commitments of modern financial risk management remain both hidden from view and politically unquestioned. The article argues that the commercialization of risk in finance should not be understood as a reaction to objectively existing danger, but as a profitable cultural process that rests upon gendered constructions of danger and security. The article examines the role of risk in the recent proposals for a new Capital Accord by the Basle Committee for Banking Supervision, and argues that the financial industry is reluctant to accept domains of incalculability in the new Accord.

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