Abstract

Financialization proceeds, in part, through increasing popular participation. Does this process ever encounter internal limits? This paper considers a project to popularize angel investing in the United States by deregulating it and bringing it online. Scholars have detailed the devices and processes by which non-professionals have come to participate in public stock markets. In comparison, angel investments in high-risk startups are unusual securities: they are local, illiquid and resist calculation and modelling. As such, this form of investing has classically depended on embodied relationships and was legally restricted to the wealthy. In the recent attempt to ‘democratize’ angel investing, however, equity crowdfunding platforms could not sustain the social attachments and ways of knowing which previously subtended the practice. Through interviews and analysis of platforms’ interfaces, I show that this project to popularize angel investment ultimately reproduced and reinscribed exclusive off-line investment networks without substantially incorporating new participants.

摘要

金融化在一定程度上是通过提高民众参与度来进行的。这个过程是否遇到过内部限制？本文考虑了一个通过放松管制并将其上线来普及天使投资在美国的项目。学者们详细介绍了非专业人士参与公共股票市场的设备和过程。相比之下，对高风险初创公司的天使投资是不寻常的证券：它们是本地的、非流动性的，并且抗拒计算和建模。因此，这种投资形式在传统上依赖于具体的关系，并且在法律上仅限于富人。然而，在最近“民主化”天使投资的尝试中，股权众筹平台无法维持以前支持这种做法的社会依恋和了解方式。