TY - GEN AU - CSI,Collectif TI - Capitalization: A Cultural Guide T2 - Sciences sociales SN - books.pressesmines.3463 PY - 2017/// CY - Paris PB - Presses des Mines KW - Sociology KW - bicssc KW - anthropology KW - economics KW - capitalism KW - trade KW - sociology N1 - Open Access N2 - What does it mean to turn something into capital? What does considering things as assets entail? What does the prevalence of an investor’s viewpoint require? What is this culture of valuation that asks that we capitalize on everything? How can we make sense of the traits, necessities and upshots of this pervasive cultural condition?This book takes the reader to an ethnographic stroll down the trail of capitalization. Start-up companies, research centers, consulting firms, state enterprises, investment banks, public administrations: the territory can certainly prove strange and disorienting at first sight, with its blurred boundaries between private appropriation and public interest, economic sanity and moral breakdown, the literal and the metaphorical, the practical and the ideological. The traveler certainly requires a resolutely pragmatist attitude, and a taste for the meanders of signification. But in all the sites in which we set foot in this inquiry we recognize a recurring semiotic complex: a scenario of valuation in which things signify by virtue of their capacity to become assets in the eye of an imagined investor.A ground-breaking anthropological investigation on the culture of contemporary capitalism, this work directs attention to the largely unexplored problem of capitalization and offers a critical resource for current debates on neoliberalism and financialization UR - https://books.openedition.org/pressesmines/3463 UR - https://directory.doabooks.org/handle/20.500.12854/149343 ER -