Cultures of high-frequency trading: mapping the landscape of algorithmic developments in contemporary financial markets

Abstract

As part of ongoing work to lay a foundation for social studies of high-frequency trading (HFT), this paper introduces the culture(s) of HFT as a sociological problem relating to knowledge and practice. HFT is often discussed as a purely technological development, where all that matters is the speed of allocating, processing and transmitting data. Indeed, the speed at which trades are executed and data transmitted is accelerating, and it is fair to say that algorithms are now the primary interacting agents operating in the financial markets. However, we contend that HFT is first and foremost a cultural phenomenon. More specifically, both individuals and collective agents – such as algorithms – might be considered cultural entities, charged with very different ways of processing information, making sense of it and turning it into knowledge and practice. This raises issues relating to situated knowledge, distributed cognition and action, the assignment of responsibility when regulating high-speed algorithms, their history, organizational structure and, perhaps more fundamentally, their representation.     

论侦查学研究视野的拓展

拓展侦查学研究视野的基本思路是在关注侦查学内部学科知识的发展和丰富的基础上,从外部入手,从侦查学与相关学科交叉结合入手,形成三类相对独立的理论范畴：直接以侦查实践为对象,以经验实证方法为主要研究方法的经验侦查学;以侦查活动中权利与权力相互关系、侦查行为的规范化为对象,以理性思辨、逻辑实证方法为主要研究方法的侦查法学;以侦查活动及侦查活动与其他社会因素的相互关系为对象,以整体性思维和经验研究为主要研究方法的侦查社会学。三种类型的侦查学理论相互协调,互为补充,构成侦查学理论体系。     

Policing Academics: The Arkhè of Transformation in Academic Ranking

This article attempts a properly critical and political analysis of the “police power” immanent to the form and logic of academic rankings, and which is reproduced in the extant academic literature generated around them. In contrast to the democratising claims made of rankings, this police power short-circuits the moment of democratic politics and establishes the basis for the oligarchic power of the State and its status quo. Central in this founding political moment is the notion of the Arkhè, a necessarily asymmetric “distribution of the sensible” that establishes the basis of the political order, in this case an oligarchic political order. Drawing on Foucault and Rancière, the article argues for a necessary “dissensus” with both the ranking practice and its attendant academic literature, as the first step towards a politics of ranking that is properly critical, and therefore genuinely political.     

How can we better align private security with the public interest? Towards a civilizing model of regulation

How can we better align private security with the public interest? This question has met with two answers in the literature on private security regulation, one seeking to cleanse the market of deviant sellers, the other to communalize the market through the empowerment of buyers. Both models of regulation are premised upon a limited neoclassical economic conception of how market transactions map onto the public interest. This article makes the case for a new model of regulation, one that seeks to civilize the market. Drawing upon the insights of economic sociology, our model regards the market for security as a moral economy in which commodity and non‐commodity values jostle and collide. On this basis, we propose a regulatory architecture where buyers and sellers are cast not only as economic actors but also as moral actors, revealing new avenues through which to encompass private security within the democratic promise of security.     

学科视野中的历史政治学:以历史社会学、政治史、比较政治学为参照

历史政治学是中国学者提出的研究政治学之全新范式,但当然不是从零开始,而有众多可资利用之知识资源,本文探讨其与历史政治学之关系。历史政治学与历史社会学均致力于带回历史、带回国家,并共享众多方法;但后者有西方中心论偏见,奉行价值无涉原则,止于理解或解释;历史政治学则破除西方中心论,公正对待中国等非西方国家、文明丰富的政治实践,且有明确价值追求,致力于从历史中探究善治之道。历史政治学呼吁历史学再度重视政治史,并使之有政治学想象力。历史政治学可为比较政治学带入大历史视野,以矫正其以西式政治制度为标准的偏失。     

Resisting the New State: Peasants and Pastoralists in Iran, 1921-41

This article examines the responses of the rural poor, both settled peasants and pastoral nomads, to the upheavals unleashed in the Iranian countryside by Riza Shah's adoption of a programme of authoritarian state-building and rapid modernization. The article shows how, contrary to the conventional assumptions of rural passivity held by both Western scholarship and Iranian nationalism, peasant and nomad communities in fact generated a variety of active responses to the regime's initiatives, both on their own account and in combination with other social forces, aimed at defending themselves and resisting unfavourable changes in their relations with landlords and state officials.     

Varieties of Regulation and Financialization: Comparative Pathways to Top Income Inequality in the OECD, 1975–2005

Abstract

With financialization now acknowledged as one of the most potent threats to income equality, can finance-driven inequality be explained by a singular causal argument? Taking the case of top incomes across the OECD, this paper addresses the standard causal narrative of finance-driven inequality, where rising top income inequality is explained as a function of deregulation, financial sector growth, and a parallel weakening of the role of trade unions and the government. Applying fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to a time-series dataset (1975–2005), it assesses the ways in which configurations of institutions combined in different ways prior to the recent financial crisis, to create policy contexts conducive to top income growth. It does this by adopting a time-series approach to QCA, involving calibration and analysis of data at three successive historical waves. Results suggest that top incomes in the era of finance-driven capitalism were subject to a diversity of causal paths which generated similar outcomes in different contexts, in a manner which departs substantially from the standard narrative. In doing so, it elaborates on the application of time-series approaches to case-based analysis, and uses its results to discuss the ways in which institutions may combine in different ways to generate similar, or divergent outcomes.     

法律社会学的定位问题:Max Weber与Hans Kelsen的比较

德国社会学家韦伯(Max Weber,1864-1920)与奥地利法学家凯尔森(Hans Kelsen,1881-1973)对"法律社会学"(Rechtssoziologie,sociology of law)的定位存在异同。他们一个从社会学家的立场,一个从法学家的立场,探讨了"法律社会学"在19世纪末叶跟着社会学(Soziologie)一起诞生的时候,究竟应该如何对这新兴的学问加以定位的问题。他们两位都是法学家出身,同样受到当时哲学思潮新康德主义(Neukantianismus)的影响,主张划分"实然"(Sein)与"应然"(Sollen),也同样对促进德语世界法律社会学的诞生有积极贡献的"自由法学派"(Freirechtle-hre)与奥地利法律社会学家艾利希(Eugen Ehrlich,1862-1922)提出了批评意见,但是他们对于"法律社会学"这门新兴的学科,却还是有不完全相同的定位。     

African security and global militarism

ABSTRACT

This Special Issue asks: what is the current place of militarism in relation to security where Africa is concerned? It aims to contribute to emerging debates interested in critical inquiry of the relation between militarism and security, and to explore its diverse articulations in African settings. We advance an international political sociological (IPS) approach to militarism in order to explore militarised security politics as a field of contested practices and logics. We discuss why this approach enables us to uncover the interconnected historical patterns and power relations in which practices and logics of security and militarism become linked and grounded in simultaneously local and transnational African settings.     

刑讯逼供的社会学分析——兼谈刑讯逼供研究的拾漏补遗

有关刑讯逼供的理论研究成果颇丰，学者们从法学、经济学、心理学等视角，探讨了刑讯逼供的原因，并提出了对策，但实践中刑讯逼供仍屡有发生。可以引用社会学研究视角，对刑讯逼供的研究从关注其行为的“规范”性因素到“价值”性因素研究；从关注其行为的“单个性”到“互动性”的研究；从关注其行为的“违法性”到“攻击性”的研究；从关注侦查人员的“人权保障者”到“角色冲突”的研究；从关注刑讯逼供的“制度化控制”到“非制度化控制”研究。