Abstraction, Studying up and Re-representing Financial Capital
Abstract
Centrally informed by visual anthropology and building upon a cycle of long-term transnationalmultimedia projects, beginning in the 1990s, addressing the predatory impact of global capitaland with particular reference to my most recent practice-led research, this article positions amethodology of ‘Studying Up’, as an activist research strategy and methodological templatein the study of financial power. Positioning such a methodology, pivoting on anthropology, tooffer a description of the cultural system of financial capital, central to the construction of ourfinancialised present and climate catastrophe, I advocate that this cultural description is anurgent prerequisite for understanding the continued maintenance of this sphere andsimultaneously, to critically inform the establishment of a beyond/post-capital inclusive andsustainable future.
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