Kate Maclean
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drkate99.bsky.social
Kate Maclean
@drkate99.bsky.social
67 followers 60 following 8 posts
Professor of Feminist Geography, Bartlett School of Planning, UCL. Editor
Gender, Place & Culture and Journal of Latin American Studies. Chair @GFG_RGSIBG.
#Firstgen. Alter-ego: Elsie Unheimlich.
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drkate99.bsky.social
I had fun with this one ;)

New paper: "Crypto Dad and the primal horde: the gendered psychodynamics of regulating cryptocurrencies"

Based on an idea I had back in 2018 - thought it wouldn't take me that long to write 🙄

www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
ABSTRACT This article examines the gendered symbolic order that is being created by the struggle between blockchain enabled currencies (colloquially known as ‘crypto’) and established financial institutions. Narratives from the financial mainstream both for and against regulation adopt classic psychoanalytic scripts of inter-generational conflict, as crypto is frequently described as ‘puerile’, whilst regulators adopt paternal epithets such as ‘Crypto Dad’. The gendered landscape of this debate, however, is complicated by the fact that those who advocate for minimal regulation of crypto on the grounds that it may ‘accelerate’ capitalism’s demise do so on explicitly anti-oedipal grounds. This article draws on work from feminist organizational studies that employs a psychoanalytic framework to culturally situate the narratives framing debates around cryptocurrency regulation. It explores the gendered underpinnings of concepts, values and the gendered ‘permitted subjectivities’ prominent in mainstream debates on regulation and both libertarian and critical accelerationist narratives. My contention is that the autogenerated scarcity which defines crypto’s value, and correlated ideas of lack and debasement, contribute to a symbolic order which is particularly aggressive towards the feminine, and continues the exclusions of orthodox capitalism, even in accelerationist accounts adopting an explicit anti-oedipal stance.
April 17, 2025 at 10:15 AM