Asset struggles: understanding conflict in contemporary capitalist societies

The proliferation of the asset form and its management through financial intermediaries has informed manifold transformations of contemporary capitalist societies. While scholarship acknowledges that these transformations are conflictuous, we currently lack a systematic understanding of the ways in which assets give rise to social conflicts. In this special issue, we introduce the notion of asset struggles to shed light on the various forms of conflicts that emerge around the asset form. Understanding assets as sites of value extraction, domination and contention, we identify three main forms of asset struggles. Contestation takes place between parties involved in the assetisation process, between social groups or factions owning or managing distinct forms of assets, and more broadly in societies where assetisation has reached such an extent that it transforms social structures and challenges the stability of political regimes. The contributions in this special issue shed light on various instances of such asset struggles, ranging from households to national economies, within and outside of the financial sector, with various forms of state involvement, and on topics as diverse as gender, climate change, housing, and infrastructure.