This article addresses contemporary art as a means to investigate how, and to what extent, financial logic impacts upon the socio-cultural sphere. Its contribution is twofold: on the one hand, the article shows that contemporary art's valuation practices increasingly reflect the logic of capitalization; on the other hand, it assesses the emancipatory potential of blockchain technology for the cultural sphere. In relation to the latter I argue that, in spite of the technological novelty of blockchain-based art projects, these nonetheless fail to challenge a received logic of finance. This exposes the limitations to technological determinism as a means of countering financial power in the socio-cultural sphere, and points to new problems for art's valuation methods in relation to the liquid logic of algorithmic finance.

Much has been learned about calculation, commodification and marketization from the social studies of markets and finance. But what of capitalization? What is distinctive about this mode of valuation and the reality it impels? What does it mean to live under the ‘asset condition’? In Capitalization: A Cultural Guide, Fabian Muniesa and his colleagues at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation take us on a tour across multiple continents and several centuries, introducing us to capitalization as a ‘cultural syndrome’. Their pragmatist enquiry involves tracing capitalization via the scenarios in which value is created, and the gaze that stimulates such value-creation. The result is a field guide to the terrain of capitalization that integrates anthropological work on the dramaturgy of finance with sociological attention to the technicalities of valuation. The stage is set for further investigation into the uneven distribution of the capacity to capitalize and its consequences.

In this article, we show how interpretive battles about compliance can lead to regulatory differentiation and, in turn, market segmentation. To do so, we study the evolution of unsecured lending in the United States, between 1900 and 1945. In the early 20th century, a large segment of the workforce relied on their wages to access credit: this required the “legal coding” of labor income into capital, where lenders would offer advances in exchange for a lien over future revenues. Regulating these transactions raised conflicts between Progressive reformers, lenders and, after 1929, federal regulators, which spanned over five decades. The historical comparison of three states—Illinois, New York and Georgia—, shows that local discussions revolved around three outcomes—legal status, pricing method and collateralization—, the issue of which led to distinct regulatory paths and market configurations at the state level. Finally, the New Deal policies created an additional strand of federal coding, furthering market divides between unregulated payday lenders, non-bank credit companies, and commercial banks. On financial markets, discussions about compliance often revolve around calculative technologies, and we suggest this as a possible crossing point between STS analyses of capitalization devices and Pistor’s theory of capital modulation.

A key tool for studying the demand for neighborhood amenities and estimating the benefits from amenity improvements is a regression of house value on amenity levels, controlling for housing characteristics. Several scholars have developed methods to address the methodological challenges, such as endogeneity, faced by these “hedonic” regressions. Unfortunately, however, some recent studies neglect basic principles of hedonic estimation in Rosen [(1974). Hedonic Prices and Implicit Markets: Product Differentiation in Pure Competition. Journal of Political Economy, 82 (1), 34–55]. After providing conceptual background, this article explains these hedonic “vices” and how to avoid them. We focus on inappropriate functional forms, inappropriate control variables, and misinterpretation of hedonic regression results. Our analysis is supported using data from the Cleveland area in 2000 and a simulation model.