Spatial Versus Functional Mobility of Capital: A Framework for Analysis

Abstract

The risk society perspective on international financial markets outlined in the previous chapter takes a number of initial steps in emphasising why it is important to recognise that capital can be mobile in two distinct ways. What is needed now is more detailed examination of the analytical distinction between the spatial and the functional mobility of capital. In order to deepen the abstract nature of this distinction but also to render it more concrete, this chapter proceeds in five stages. Taken together, they establish the foundations of the intellectual framework that will be deployed throughout the remainder of the book.