Cultures of Inequality: Financialisation, Labour and Social Finance

This article analyses the role of Social Finance as an example of financial innovation to argue that by subjecting the reproductive needs of labour (housing, schooling, caring) to precise controlling algorithms similar to those applied to financial assets, Social Finance offers insights to the underlying inequality of power between Labour and Finance. By tracing the evolution of Social Finance since the early 1970s, this paper argues that this inequality of power must be conceived in a true hegemonic sense, i.e. as a practice that combines consent and coercion. I will contend that Social Finance operates at the zone of in-distinction between the "financing of labour" and the "labouring of finance" that reinforces the logic of finance rather than questioning it.