Contents



Preface and Acknowledgements 7

Introduction 9

Torsten Strulik



Part 1: Theoretical Perspectives on Knowledge and Finance

The Autonomy of the Financial System: Symbolic Coupling and the

Language of Capital 36

Helmut Willke



On the Unity and Difference of Finance and the Economy:

Investigations for a New Sociology of Money 70

Hanno Pahl



An Institutional Approach to the Politics of Global Finance 104

Timothy J. Sinclair



Part 2: Cultures and Techniques of a Cognitive Mode

How Financial Numbers are Symptomatic 132

Hendrik Vollmer



Cultures of Economic Calculation 156

Herbert Kalthoff



Cognitive Shifts in Regulation: The Role of Ignorance in the

Regulatory Field of Accounting 180

Alexandra Hessling



Part 3: The Importance of Private Expertise in Financial Governance

The Role of Policy Communities in Global Financial Governance:

A Critical Examination of the Group of Thirty 213

Eleni Tsingou



Rating Agencies, Ignorance and the Knowledge-Based Production

of System Trust 239

Torsten Strulik



Part 4: Basel II - A Cognitive Turn in Banking Regulation?

Governance without Politics? Administration and Politics in the

Basel II Process 259

Boris Holzer



Making Use of Cognitive Standards: On the Logic of a New Mode

of Governance in Global Finance 279

Matthias Kussin/Sven Kette



Authors 304