The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary : Changing perceptions of private wealth in Finnish business media, 1981–2021

This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary : Changing perceptions of private wealth in Finnish business media, 1981–2021 © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Published version Kuusela, Hanna Kuusela, H. (2024). The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary : Changing perceptions of private wealth in Finnish business media, 1981–2021. Economy and Society, Early online. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2024.2406088 2024 Economy and Society ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: www.tandfonline.com/journals/reso20 The rise of the owners and the neoaccumulationist imaginary: Changing perceptions of private wealth in Finnish business media, 1981– 2021 Hanna Kuusela To cite this article: Hanna Kuusela (08 Nov 2024): The rise of the owners and the neoaccumulationist imaginary: Changing perceptions of private wealth in Finnish business media, 1981–2021, Economy and Society, DOI: 10.1080/03085147.2024.2406088 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2024.2406088 © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 08 Nov 2024. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 6 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=reso20 The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary: Changing perceptions of private wealth in Finnish business media, 1981–2021 Hanna Kuusela Abstract The rise of the super-rich has been a defining characteristic of recent decades. This paper analyses the cultural underpinnings of contemporary private wealth accumulation, by exploring the changes in how Finnish business media has approached wealth accumulation at the top. Drawing from cultural political economy and Bourdieu’s theory of the social space, it examines how private wealth and wealthy owners have been represented in Finnish business media between 1981 and 2021. The paper argues that the changes in the representations demonstrate a rise of a new imaginary, in which private wealth accumulation is valued and perceived as a desirable goal both for individuals and the society. Finally, these cultural changes might pave the way for a new economic regime Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. Hanna Kuusela, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä, PL 35 40014, Jyväskylän yliopisto, Finland. E-mail: [email protected] Economy and Society: 1–24 https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2024.2406088 that could be called neo-accumulationist, meaning a regime characterized by specific advantages for those with accumulated economic assets. Keywords: ownership; super-rich; wealth; media representations; inequality; neo-accumulationism. Introduction The rise of the super-rich and new manifestations of wealth accumulation have been defining characteristics of recent decades. Statistics offer striking evidence of how contemporary ownership structures and socio-political regimes benefit the few. The combined financial wealth of high-net-worth individuals (HNWI) is estimated to have grown from US$ 46 trillion to US$ 74 trillion between 2012 and 2019 alone (Capgemini, 2020). 1 This paper analyses the cultural underpinnings of such private wealth accumulation, depicting those cultural changes that have accompanied the economic and material changes. More precisely, it explores the cultural imaginaries accompanying the latest rounds of accumulation, by analysing how private wealth and its owners have been represented in Finnish business media since 1980s. By analysing Finnish media material across decades, the paper charts how a Nordic welfare state has culturally adapted to a new era, characterized by free capital flows and increasing wealth inequalities, driven by the top groups. This way the paper starts to fill a gap in research concerning the wealthy. While research on different elites has been on the rise (see e.g. Hay & Beaverstock, 2016; Korsnes et al., 2018), there is only limited attention paid to the wealthy understood as beneficial owners, and to the role of media in legitimizing contemporary wealth accumulation (see Grisold & Preston, 2020). Theoretically and methodologically, the paper builds on the traditions of cultural political economy (CPE) (e.g. Best & Paterson, 2010; Jessop, 2004; Sum & Jessop, 2013; Sum, 2013) and Pierre Bourdieu’s (1985) theories of the social space. Both look at the constitutive role of cultural meaning-making in economic practices and the reproduction of capitalist formations. The paper is, thus, concerned with the cultural conditions of the global political economy, while also seeing these dynamics as dependent on material conditions. The paper argues that the changes in the representations of the rich in the Finnish business media demonstrate a rise of a new world-view (Bourdieu, 1985) or imaginary (Jessop, 2011). In this new imaginary private wealth is presented as something that should be admired and served, rather than regulated or distributed. This change in the imaginary, enacted in the business media, places the act of owning and the figure of the owner (instead of, for example, that of labour) at the centre of the economy and the society, or in Bourdieu’s (1985) vocabulary, of the social space. The media material, thus, bears witness to a new understanding of the social space, characterized by specific symbolic admiration for rich individuals. In this 2 Economy and Society imaginary, private wealth accumulation – and wealth inequalities – are not only tolerated but encouraged and idealized. Finally, the paper argues that such an inquiry leads to a deeper understanding of the current socio-economic situation that could be called not only neo-proprietarian – a word used by Piketty (2020) –, but neo-accumulationist. By this new concept, I refer to an imaginary – and potentially also a new regime of accumulation – that is characterized by great symbolic admiration and policy advantages for those who have accumulated economic assets. Taking further the theorization around so-called asset economy (e.g. Adkins et al., 2020), the paper suggests that this new imaginary celebrates not only asset ownership and private investing in general, but more specifically ownership in its accumulated form. Such an imaginary stretches to the extreme the argument of the classical liberalists about the importance of capital accumulation for economic growth that Michael B. Levy (1983) has called the ‘accumulationist’ tradition. Making the accumulation of capital the centrepiece of growth and development (Prendergast, 2010), the classical liberalists laid the foundations for legitimizing unequal wealth distribution. What we see now is a return to these classical arguments but in a new guise that celebrates the wealthy owner not only as a necessary function or actor of the economy, but as a skilful individual who deserves both symbolic admiration and specific advantages. The paper investigates how such a shift has become culturally legitimized in a Nordic country that has traditionally been associated with equality and distributive policies. The changing imaginary in Finland Deregulation of trade and the financial markets, often discussed under globalization, neoliberalism and financialization, have been major economic forces since the 1980s. The same period marks the rise of the super-rich, as wealth accumulation at the top has been an important characteristic of the globalized economy. Thus, the decades before and after the turn of the millennium can be seen as a period when new set of contradictions and possibly also new perceptions concerning private accumulation have emerged. The global economic changes have entailed and also caused major cultural changes in individual countries. This is the case also in Finland, a Nordic country, where the past four decades mark a major shift from the period of controlled capital markets to the period of free capital flows and increased wealth accumulation at the top. Deregulation and macroeconomic policies have played an important role in the Finnish economy of the last 50 years (Honkapohja et al., 2009). The economy experienced a strong overheating in the 1980s, which led to a depression in the early 1990s. According to Honkapohja et al. (2009), the 1990s crisis in Finland was grounded in several features not included in a standard business cycle. These included the expansion of bank lending because of Hanna Kuusela: The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary 3 deregulation and major inflows of foreign capital, speculative attacks on the currency, high real interest rates and a banking crisis. The recovery from the crisis in mid-1990s was, however, remarkable and Finland experienced a transformation from an industrial country to a high-tech economy (Honkapohja et al., 2009). As in most countries, also in Finland this period of deregulation increased wealth and income inequalities. As a Nordic welfare state, Finland has historically been characterized by a strong social pact between social groups, and the income disparities in Finland diminished after World War II (Atkinson et al., 1995). However, after decades of decline, economic inequalities grew rapidly in the 1990s and new levels of prosperity emerged, so that along with other countries, Finland witnessed an increase in top incomes and wealth (Riihelä et al., 2010). A significant part of income in the top groups in Finland consists of lowtaxed capital income, indicating that it is not primarily through wage labour – but the financial markets – that the top has increased its share. The development has been fast; the 1 per cent of the population with the highest capital income received about 14 per cent of the total capital income in 1971, about 20 per cent at the beginning of the 1990s and 35 per cent in 2004 (Riihelä et al., 2010). In other words, Finland is a good example of an economy in which the top groups have benefitted greatly from asset ownership and the financial markets, created by deregulation (see also Kuusela & Kantola, 2020). One reason for this is that share ownership is highly concentrated in Finland (Keloharju & Lehtinen, 2015). The Lorenz curve for financial assets places Finland somewhere between the United States and Germany, thus, demonstrating that regarding ownership, Finland is not as equal as perhaps thought (LWS, 2023). This paper depicts the cultural changes that have accompanied, or even supported, these material changes around the turn of the millennium. It shows how this period also marks the emergence of a new cultural understanding around (private) wealth in Finland. Because of its welfare state tradition and significant changes in the composition of economic inequalities in recent decades, Finland offers an interesting case for studying the changing imaginaries concerning private wealth accumulation, as these changes have been faster and culturally more profound in Finland than in countries that have historically had a stronger market orientation, including a more visible role of private wealth. By taking as its object of empirical analysis the discourses around private wealth in the Finnish business media during the decades marked by economic changes, the paper draws both from Bourdieu’s theory of the social space and from the basic premises of CPE. CPE aims at identifying the contingent dependence of economic practices – like those of intensifying private accumulation – on specific cultures which change over time (Best & Paterson, 2010). The approach can be perceived as a middle ground between economic reductionism, which subordinates social action to economic calculus, and pure social constructivism, which privileges discourses as the primary processes shaping the 4 Economy and Society world (Jessop, 2004). Similarly, Bourdieu’s (1985, p. 723) theory of the social space – understood as a space of relative positions occupied by individuals and groupings within it – calls for a ‘break with the economism that leads one to reduce the social field, a multi-dimensional space, solely to the economic field, to the relations of economic production’. Rather than making simplistic causal claims about the primacy of either the discursive or the material, these theories see their relation as bidirectional and intertwined. While Bourdieu (1985, p. 728) is interested in the ‘symbolic struggles for the power to produce and impose the legitimate world-view’, CPE aims at recognizing both the constitutive role of semiosis and the extra-semiotic features of social relations and their impact on the reproduction of specific accumulation regimes (Jessop, 2004). As Bob Jessop (2004, 2011) notes, the consolidation of a new economic regime depends critically on the ability to create a new economic imaginary, a semiotic system that guides collective calculation about the world. Viewed in these terms, ‘an economic imaginary gives meaning and shape to the “economic” field and, in certain conditions, may become the basis for economic strategies, state projects, and hegemonic visions’ (Jessop, 2011, p. 5). 2 Unlike most work in the CPE tradition, this paper does not map macroeconomic regime changes, but has a goal of a different scale: to identify new ways of understanding the role of the super-rich, and in this way some characteristics of the neo-accumulationist era. I use the concept of the imaginary to describe changes of different scales and on different levels of the social space: the changing portrayals of (rich) owners in Finnish business media can be identified as changes in a specific micro-level imaginary, but they seem to point towards the emergence of a new neo-accumulationist imaginary on the meso - or macrolevel. Rich in the media The specific object of analysis in this paper consists of the media representations of accumulated private ownership and rich individuals. In doing so, the paper contributes to a growing area of research around media representations of economic inequalities (Grisold & Preston, 2020; Grisold & Theine, 2017; Epp & Jennings, 2020) and the rich (Bank, 2016; Jaworski & Thurlow, 2017; Waitkus & Wallaschek, 2022; Vikström 2024). Media plays an important role in constructing views concerning economic inequalities, but relatively little is known on how economic inequalities are mediated. As Grisold and Preston (2020, p. 10) argue in their literature review, academics have tended to neglect or downplay considerations of the links between journalism and economic processes and inequalities. While individual case studies on the representations of wealth exist (Frederick, 2010; Jaworski & Thurlow, 2017), only a few studies have systematically investigated media representations of the rich. In her research on how class is framed in the US media, Kendall (2011) has identified certain recurring Hanna Kuusela: The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary 5 frames concerning the wealthy. In her analysis, the media frames that show the wealthy as more interesting and deserving than others stand in contrast to portrayals of the poor as living tedious lives. More specifically, some studies have investigated the media coverage of executive pays (Bank, 2016) and wealth taxes (Bell & Entman, 2011), topics related to private wealth. Vikström (2024) has studied the media representations of the rich in Sweden, and finally, Waitkus and Wallaschek (2022) have analysed how wealthy families have been portrayed in German media from 2014 to 2018. Drawing on a sample of 899 media papers, they show how discussion of wealthy owners remains largely tucked into frames surrounding entrepreneurialism, investment and profit-seeking. To a lesser degree, the debate also circles around inequalities and moral evaluations, but in general, wealthy owners are portrayed in favourable ways. The present paper follows these empirical inquiries, offering an analysis of a Nordic country and its business journalism over four decades. Rather than focusing on one moment, the paper describes the changes in the imaginaries around private wealth. As elsewhere, also in Finland research on such media representations is rare, Patja’s (2011) research on the changing perceptions of family businesses forming an exception. Data The data analysed in this paper includes five full volumes of two Finnish business magazines, Arvopaperi (Security, referring to tradable financial assets) and Talouselämä (Economic Life), from the years 1981, 1991, 2001, 2011 and 2021. These volumes include altogether 258 issues (see Table 1). Business journalism was chosen as the object of analysis, because of its growing social significance (Kjær & Slaatta, 2007), and because changes concerning the perception of private wealth can be assumed to be most profound in this genre. The historical evolution of Finnish business journalism has been only sparsely studied (Ainamo et al., 2007), but in general the decades investigated are those in which business journalism went through a period of Table 1. The size of the data Year Number of issues of Talouselämä i Number of issues of Arvopaperi ii 1981 38 4 1991 43 6 2001 43 11 2011 44 12 2021 46 11 Notes: i Pages per issue 52–112. ii Pages per issue: in the first two volumes 8–46, in the subsequent volumes 70–90. 6 Economy and Society expansion in all Nordic countries (Kjær & Slaatta, 2007). These decades saw the growing power of the financial press, and they also mark the increased professionalization of business journalism. According to Kjær and Slaatta (2007), the expansion of Nordic business news has transformed not only the institutions of news production, but also the context of the production of shared meanings concerning economy. With its expanding readership business journalism has occupied an increasingly important role in the ‘symbolic struggle over the production of common sense’ (Bourdieu, 1985, p. 731). Business journalism is, thus, a particularly apt object of analysis from the perspectives of CPE, more so than daily newspapers, as it is a sphere in which the material and the discursive come together with particular force. Rather than presenting my data as a representative sample of the Finnish public sphere, by focusing on two business magazines, I investigate the changes in a discursive field specialized in economy. The time frame of the analysis is based on the hypothesis that the 40 years between 1981 and 2021 mark a substantial shift in the Finnish (cultural) political economy, as argued earlier. The analysis starts from 1981, because the other magazine, Arvopaperi, was established that year as the members’ magazine of The Finnish Shareholders’ Association. In 1981, Arvopaperi was only a modest leaflet of the association, which is reflected in the number of articles in the sample, but later it turned into a commercial magazine that has been owned by different media conglomerates – itself a sign of the growing significance of business journalism. The other magazine, Talouselämä, was already established in 1938. Due to their asynchronous histories, in practice, the analysis of the first sample years is based on Talouselämä, and Arvopaperi is only used to analyse the imaginaries of the later years. These magazines were chosen to focus on business journalism, for the reasons explicated above, but the choice was also pragmatic: unlike daily newspapers (or the business newspaper Kauppalehti), a weekly magazine and a magazine that publishes less than 12 issues a year provide a manageable data for a qualitative analysis of five sample years. The choice also enriches the view on Finnish journalism, as most media research has lately focused on those few newspapers that have been fully digitized, leaving vast amount of magazine journalism unexplored. Nevertheless, the data was considerable in size. The original data included some 15,000–20,000 pages. The data collection and analysis proceeded in the following way. In the first phase, all the issues of the two magazines (obtained from library) were skimmed through and relevant keywords were identified inductively. The chosen keywords were words that could be used as proxies for great private wealth and its ownership (see Table 2). As the aim was to analyse discussion on private wealth accumulation, the keywords were chosen to include not only rich individuals, but also discussions on practices and ideas concerning ownership, private investments and the phenomenon of getting rich. Hanna Kuusela: The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary 7 (8/2001, p. 26, from here on AP) title teaches how ‘The desire to get rich is the basis of the welfare state’, explaining how enviousness is bad for the country. These new journalistic elements can be linked to the changes in the economic field. They reflect the shift of power within business organizations, often described as a transition from management to shareholder control (Lazonick & O’Sullivan, 2000). This shareholder revolution involved owners’ attempts to capitalize on companies through dividend policies and company restructurings by activist investors and private equity. These tendencies created new markets for business journalism and strengthened the role of rich individuals as important business actors, in contrast to the manager-led corporations of the previous decades. Finally, in many media stories of 2001 getting rich is represented as an imperative. ‘Get rich with non-existing stocks’, says a story educating the readers about the art of selling short (TE 33/2001, p. 45). Also, this shift in the media can be associated with a larger cultural shift around economic agency, often referred to as popular finance (Aitken, 2007). This shift that has turned citizen-consumers into citizen-investors has been visible in Finland, too. With the exception of the financial crisis of 2008, the number of individual investors in Finland has seen a steady rise in the past decades, from 765,000 in 2000 to 991,000 in 2023 (Pörssisäätiö, 2023). The articles in 2011 anticipated this shift often adopting a pedagogical tone. Owning emerges as a skill that Finns should learn. ‘Finns are better at managing than at owning’ (TE 8/2001, p. 82), one title complains, whereas another explains how, ‘The shareholder is learning how to diversify’ (TE 2001, page missing). A further important shift in the data steers focus to family wealth. It is discussed in new, celebratory, ways beyond the neutral registers of the previous years. For example, Talouselämä launched a feature article series that ‘introduces significant family businesses’ (TE 27/2001, p. 34). Instead of a business model among others, family businesses are now presented as important socioeconomic actors with distinct virtues. An article about the meat producer Snellman states how ‘In terms of commitment, the small locality, kinship relations and a common faith can be highly beneficial’ (TE 27/2001, p. 35). Talouselämä also features a seven-page long article on the 100 largest family businesses in Finland with a subtitle: ‘Bring on recession, the families are not afraid’ (TE 31/2001, p. 34). Family businesses are increasingly represented as positive alternatives for the short-sightedness of listed companies and shareholder value ideology, like in the following: Work, honesty and human beings are the values of [the family business] Berner Ltd. The CEO Berner understands the philosophy of listed companies but warns that shareholder value should not be emphasised too much. In his opinion, a company makes false strategic decisions if it thinks about profit every single day. (TE 31/2001, p. 36) Thus, the emerging imaginary includes an interesting paradox: on the one hand, it invites everyone to participate in the markets as shareholders, 14 Economy and Society celebrating distributed ownership, while at the same time shareholders’ demands are seen as a challenge for companies. For example, the listed company Huhtamäki is discussed as being in a tight situation, as the restructuring of the company is slow, but the shareholders demand profits (TE 34/2001, p. 30). Finally, noteworthy in the data of 2001 – when compared to the subsequent years – is the presence of inequalities as a topic. The new focus on the rich is accompanied with several articles that mention economic inequalities. Several articles that address private wealth discuss it as a potential source of conflict that the articles try to deconstruct. Old structures of thought are criticized, like in the article that teaches how ‘from early on we have got used to zerosum games … they have made us believe that if someone gets rich it takes something from me’ (TE 1/2001, 53). While acknowledging the growing inequalities, the magazines, however, subscribe to a need to create more wealth: Income inequalities are growing, this development directly affects the core structures of the Finnish society. … The discussion ignores the bright side of the problem. It is possible to reduce income inequalities also by increasing the income of those earning less. But this is not possible with the old recipes of distribution, and we should be able to discuss this. Success has created new capital for us and an opportunity to fix things, so that in future we can distribute wealth instead of misery. (TE 1/2001, p. 3) These registers that take into account the inequalities that accompany the new forms of prosperity more or less vanished in 2011 and 2021 when personal wealth has become a desirable goal without a moral or cultural need to defend it. 2011: The call for strong owners In 2011, the new imaginary that emphasizes strong and well-known private owners is consolidated. In contrast to the previous years, now in several articles owners are differentiated from mere investors and associated with virtues that investors lack. The social space gets constructed anew in the media, so that owners now occupy an increasingly important position. As one member of a dynastic family states: ‘We don’t want to be investors, we want to be owners. We have a long span’ (AP Jan/2011, p. 43). Owning is represented as different from investing, and accumulated ownership is attached to a long-term approach: ‘We are a family company and an industrial owner … . It means we are in it for the long-term’, says another family owner. This article that introduces a dynastic family presents ownership as a skill, its title being: ‘The art of ownership’ (AP Mar/2011, p. 22). One rich owner wishes to ‘hear more loudly the voice of well-known owners in public’ (AP Jun/2011, p. 25). The owner’s voice is a common metaphor: Hanna Kuusela: The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary 15 If ownership is concentrated, minority shareholders often have to settle for the decisions of the major shareholder. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Companies that have a strong owner and a strong owner’s voice do not need to make diluted compromises. (AP Jun/2011, p. 46) In different articles, centralized ownership appears as a virtue, the absence of which causes unaccountability. This is visible, for example, in an interview of a family business owner (who later becomes a minister): For Anne Berner a significant [anchor] owner is a vitamin that helps a company to grow beyond decades. ‘A strong owner brings values, a clear goal and capital to a company. Listed companies often have good boards but they lack the owners’ perspective’. 3 In Berner’s opinion, even the financial crisis of 2008–2009 was caused by the disappearance of ownership: ‘When ownership is dispersed into small fragments in investment funds, the owners no longer know what they own. For whom is the management accountable then? To itself?’ (TE 14/2011, p. 28). In 2011, the centralization of private ownership is increasingly presented as a win-win situation, and different articles identify cultural attitudes that need to change for private accumulation to benefit the society. As one owner puts it: Finland ‘lacks a strong signal that would tell entrepreneurs that those who succeed have the right to get rich in the name of fairness [emphasis in original]’ (TE 14/2011, p. 26). Here fairness becomes associated with the ability to get rich, instead of equality. This is far away from the imaginary of the 1980s and 1990s, when focus was on companies, instead of their (potentially rich) owners. Also, the Minister of Economic Affairs criticizes the Finnish culture from the perspective of ownership: Häkämies says domestic ownership is important, but ownership does not come out of nothing. ‘It is the result of getting rich, and it is not considered a very good thing here. If someone succeeds, it is not away from anyone, but it means more to everyone. Financial crises and other crises have shown that Finnish owners can be important for the country. ‘They are committed to their homeland and know the local conditions better’. Häkämies thinks that the government’s task is to support entrepreneurship and the possibilities of getting rich. (TE 25/2011, p. 8) If the media year of 2001 witnessed the emergence of rich individuals in the social space, in 2011, the new topic is the shortage of rich people in Finland. ‘We don’t have Wallenberg’s [Sweden’s richest family] or other rich people’ (TE 4/2011, p. 28), complains one article. This is presented as an attitude problem: ‘When I ask engineering students who wants to get their first 16 Economy and Society million before turning 30, every tenth raises their hand. Of business students, none’, an entrepreneur regrets the lack of ambition (TE 4/2011, p. 27). The magazines also continue to teach their readers how to get rich: ‘Facilitate your own wealth creation’ (TE 11/2011, p. 73), ‘This is how to get rich by working’ (TE 34/2011, p. 60) and ‘The timing makes a millionaire’ (TE 28/ 2011, p. 27), the titles advice. A similar pedagogical tone can be heard in the following advice: ‘Finns are accustomed to owning real estate, forest, land, cottages, movables. It should be equally attractive to own businesses’ (TE 14/ 2011, p. 26). Despite the financial crisis and the euro crisis, such stories do not include discussion on economic inequalities. This new imaginary that places owners at the centre of the social space, however, builds on several contradictions. This is most visible in how the discussion on well-known owners – introduced above – is often associated or contrasted with the problem of foreign ownership. After decades of market liberalization, promoted by the business media, in 2011 several articles start to present foreign capital as a potential problem. In a nationalistic spirit (Fetzer, 2022; Gehlen et al., 2020), they include demarcation between domestic and foreign ownership, so that the ownership ideology is built on a nationalistic opposition between the (good domestic) owners and the (bad foreign) investors. In Arvopaperi, for example, ‘Domestic ownership base’ is described as bringing ‘stability and leading to a ‘more stable development of the stock price’, in contrast to the ‘profit forecasts’ of ‘foreign investors’ which are ‘a castle in the air’ (AP Aug/2011, pp. 38–39). Similarly, one title and lead in Talouselämä build an opposition between a Finnish industry and its foreign owners: ‘Bad owners wilted the Finnish shipbuilders. The Norwegians did not invest, the Koreans did not develop. This is why cruise ships are now built in Germany instead of Finland’ (TE 23/2011, p. 21). Several stories also regret that Finnish companies are acquired by foreign investors. According to one story, ‘Blackrock and JP Morgan hoard the Finnish mining money’, making ‘the wealthy customers of American banks rich’ (TE 2/2011, p. 20–23). The attitudes towards foreign capital remain, however, highly ambiguous, as some stories also celebrate foreign investments. Positive undertones are typical for stories that discuss small companies, as in this title and the lead: ‘American millions to an Espoo-based company. An Espoo-based company that investigates mobile markets got a wealthy American owner’ (TE 26/2011, p. 14). Yet, on a more abstract level, foreign money is seen as a problem, like in a story that complains how ‘Finnish start-ups end up in foreign hands the moment they should start conquering the world’ (TE 4/2011, p. 24). 2021: Proud and passionate owners By 2021 ownership has become a symbolically strong position in the media texts, and several articles advocate private ownership as an important social institution. It is a point of (self-)identification for many interviewees, much Hanna Kuusela: The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary 17 more than in the previous decades. Ownership is also increasingly described as hard work. In 2021, many interviewees discussed the effects associated with ownership. One member of a dynastic family explains how the social values have changed from his childhood: ‘Today ownership is not something one needs to be ashamed of, and we try to teach the next generation to be proud and devoted owners’, Porkkala says. ‘Ownership is work, and we have a passion for it. Through ownership one can have a strong impact on things’ (TE 4/2021, p. 32). In addition to passion, one title teaches how ‘Ownership is a pleasure’ (AP Feb/2021, p. 22). The volumes of 2021 include several articles that focus explicitly on ownership. By now, ownership has become a skill that some families have (see also Kuusela, 2018, 2023). As one head of a family’s holding company suggests: ‘We do what we are best at, and owning is our thing’ (TE 6/2021, p. 14– 16). Similarly, a CEO of a family’s investment company is introduced as ‘An eternal owner’ (AP Feb/2021, p. 25). Instead of a contractual relationship, in the new imaginary ownership has become a quality or character of specific families and individuals. Examples of such owner talk are manifold. ‘Together we strive to evolve as owners, so that Pontos [a holding company] would be a good owner’, says a CEO of a family’s investment company worth some 400 million euros (TE 25/ 2021, p. 40). In his column, one of the wealthiest individuals in Finland, Heikki Herlin, writes of ‘The three dimensions of ownership’. According to him, ‘what is at stake in developing Finnish ownership is not only the money of the owners, but the ability of the welfare state to reform itself’ (TE 42/2021, p. 63). The differentiation between investors and owners as two distinct positions in the social space, already visible in 2011, continues to be a recurrent topic. In one article portraying an owner family, the journalist asks whether the family’s holding company is an owner or an investor and the interviewee answers: ‘Above all, Onvest is an owner, a long-term, responsible, industrial owner. The aim is to create revenues for a controlled risk’ (TE 32/2021, p. 15). In several articles, readers are taught how channelling capital to the wealthy benefits the society at large. A book review refers to wealthy women who ‘remind us that the society needs wealthy people because they create wealth around them’ (TE 34/2021, p. 64). In another article, Jacob Wallenberg, a representative of Sweden’s wealthiest dynasty, explains how owners are central to the economy: ‘It is very simple. A company pays dividends for its owners, who invest these dividends to new businesses, research and development. When you stop this, you stop many things’ (TE 16/2021, p. 25). Wallenberg criticizes political attempts to tighten dividend policies and suggestions of the European Commission to force companies to acknowledge other stakeholders besides owners: ‘Europe’s competitiveness suffers if capital is locked into the companies instead of it being shared to their owners as dividends’ (TE 16/2021, p. 26). The owners are, thus, presented as vital for the development of new businesses. The article also mentions the lack of ownership as one of Finland’s problems: 18 Economy and Society the Wallenbergs represent what we lack in Finland: long-term owners who develop companies and collect dividends for the benefit of their own society instead of selling their companies abroad the moment a suitable buyer comes with a stash of money. (TE 16/2021, p. 26) It can be argued that ideologically the figure of the owner now poses a threat even to the entrepreneur who was undoubtedly the idealized social position of the previous decades (Heelas & Morris, 1992). In addition to entrepreneurs, the society is represented as in need of owners. ‘From entrepreneur to owner’, says the title of an article encouraging entrepreneurs to turn into something more (AP Sep/ 2021, p. 27). In another story, a patriarch of a dynastic family, refers to cultural changes, suggesting that ‘Entrepreneurship is not disliked anymore in Finland. I believe ownership is on the same path’ (AP Jun/2021 p. 36). He reminds how ‘in Sweden and Germany owners have been able to participate in the public debate without being constantly insulted, because these countries have longer traditions for ownership’. He had led a governmental working group suggesting a programme for an ‘ownership society’ and explains how Finland ‘has been both ignorant and negative towards ownership. Ownership has not been understood as something that creates value’ (AP Jun/2021, p. 35). In many articles, owners, thus, complain about not being appreciated. In one article, the journalist asks about the importance of domestic ownership and the interviewee explains how ‘For the Finnish economy and future it is important. As an industrial owner, I can say that I wished for a more positive atmosphere. Ownership is real work’ (TE 6/2021, p. 16). Such frustration also results in stories that demand young Finns to get rich. As one title says: ‘Investment author Seppo Saario educates his four grandsons to become millionaires and recommends the same for every youngster. The Finns still don’t dare or know how to become rich, he says’ (TE 1/2011, p. 37.). In the article, the interviewee ‘thinks that young people should aim at a ten-time increase of their investment wealth every ten years. They should set their goals high enough. Make yourselves millionaires’ (TE 1/ 2011, p. 38). Conclusions In his writings on the social space, Bourdieu (1985) refers to the long-lasting social statuses that are socially recognized and, thus, institutionalized. The four decades described in this paper bear witness to the increasing social recognition of the wealthy owner. During these decades, accumulated private ownership becomes idealized, so that the media data increasingly calls admiration for those who manage to profit from the markets more than others. Rather than perceived as negative side-effects of the deregulated markets, or challenges for social cohesion, rich individuals are presented as role models. Simultaneously, ownership gets constructed as a skill. The older, mostly pejorative, Hanna Kuusela: The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary 19 figures, like those of the robber baron, are replaced with an owner who teaches how owning benefits the entire society. This new imaginary, or CPE, that presents wealthy individuals as quintessential for economic prosperity can be assessed against the theorizations of the paradigmatic figures of capitalism. In their attempts to describe long-term patterns of change, researchers have periodized capitalism into different growth regimes, focusing on the hegemonic actor roles in each period (McDonough et al., 2010). The shifts in the imaginaries of the Finnish business media point towards the rise of the wealthy owner as the newest paradigmatic figure. This can be interpreted as a return to the ethos of the late nineteenth century when entrepreneur-owners ran their companies, but perhaps, it is best seen as illustrating a cultural shift towards rentier capitalism, or what could be called a neo-accumulationist regime in which being wealthy has become a privileged subject position. Instead of celebrating small investors or entrepreneurs, this new imaginary – and the growth regime that follows – is characterized by great cultural admiration and a call for specific policy advantages for those who have accumulated private assets. It is an imaginary fascinated with rich people to the extent that ownership is seen as the true character of these individuals and a skill, the master of which benefits everyone (Kuusela, 2024). Instead of unveiling a neo-proprietarian ideology (see Piketty, 2020), the analysis of this paper reveals something more: the rise of a neo-accumulationist imaginary and regime characterized by exclusive privileges granted to the very wealthy at the expense of others. This new imaginary is not so much preoccupied with protecting private property as a universal category, but in protecting its accumulated (and often dynastic) forms. It does this by placing rich individuals, not their capital, at the heart of economic growth and prosperity. Instead of arguing, for example, for the importance of pooling capital with the help of the stock market, mutual funds, state ownership or employee ownership, the neo-accumulationist imaginary focuses on rich individuals as the most important accumulators and providers of capital (see also Kuusela, 2024). In concrete terms, the rise of the neo-accumulationist imaginary and regime can be seen in different legal and professional tools available exclusively to the very wealth – something that Tait (2020) has referred to as ‘high-wealth exceptionalism’. According to her, the ‘law of high-wealth exceptionalism constitutes high-wealth families as sovereign entities … deserving of exemption from the rules that govern ordinary-wealth families’ (Tait, 2020, p. 982). The specific policy privileges and legal devices available for the very wealthy depend on local jurisdictions, but the trend is global. As McGoey (2021) has argued, growing belief that profit-making and public welfare are naturally aligned has contributed to major shifts in legislation, but the current critical literature has yet to fully appreciate the legal and democratic implications of the new ethos, or what I would call the neo-accumulationist imaginary. The analysis presented in this paper shows, however, several contradictions in the imaginary supporting high-wealth exceptionalism. As decades pass, the Finnish business media increasingly starts to differentiate between owners, who 20 Economy and Society are preferably rich Finns, and investors or venture capitalists, presented as foreigners. In the media, answers to questions concerning who should become rich and who should own companies start to contradict each other. Should wealth accumulate in the hands of the few Finns, or should everyone be able to get rich? Should Finnish companies attract foreign capital, or should they be owned by Finns only? These are some of the key dilemmas that the new imaginary informed by both nationalism (Fetzer, 2022) and globalism seem unable to solve. To what extent the shifts in the business media presented here have corresponded with shifts in public opinion is beyond the empirical scope of this paper, but it can be assumed that in the long run commercial media and the common sense of the public cannot contrast strongly. This is a key assumption of the CPE approach: cultural, political and material changes are intertwined, if not always immediately, at least in the long run. While this paper has concentrated on Finnish media, many of the tendencies described here are global in nature. Future research should assess possible differences between countries and regions in exploring linkages between rising (economic) imaginaries and their political counterparts. The contradictions of the new imaginary have not remained politically unnoticed. Instead, the current regime that has increased systemic risks in the financial markets, shifted tax burdens from the wealthy to the middle-class and widened the wealth gap has no doubt been a powerful force behind the populist and nationalist backlashes of the 2010s and 2020s. It would be good to know in more detail to what extent, for example, the self-contradictory ideals concerning foreign and domestic ownership, typical for the new imaginaries, have paved the way for contemporary populism. Acknowledgements Thank you, Yrjö Kallinen, for your invaluable assistance in data collection. Your efforts were immensely helpful. I also want to thank the members of the Wealth and Social Inequality group and its leaders Prof. Jens Beckert and Dr. Isabell Stamm at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies for their valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this paper. The final version of the paper was written during my research visit at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo. I wish to thank the department and my wonderful hosts Maren Toft and Marianne Nordli Hansen for organizing a research seminar in which the paper was discussed. Disclosure statement No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s). Funding This work was supported by the Academy of Finland; under Grant 323488; and Future Challenges in the Nordics programme. Hanna Kuusela: The rise of the owners and the neo-accumulationist imaginary 21 Ethical approval statement The author confirms that the study has followed all the ethical protocols of The Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK). 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