Rent and financialisation as concrete totality: The case for provisioning approaches as method of abstraction

Abstract

Drawing on dialogues between Michael Ball and Ben Fine, this paper proposes provisioning approaches as a way of reintegrating theoretical and institutional work on rent. Recent debates on financialisation and rent theory overlook the potential contribution of provisioning approaches because urban studies typically take the work of Ball as reference point. By looking at provisioning approaches beyond Ball, the paper shows that such approaches are already making important contributions to financialisation research. It then proposes an interpretation of provisioning approaches as extending Marx’s method of moving between abstract and concrete and thereby integrating agentic and theoretic understandings of rent.