Economy and Society

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Assetization as a mode of techno-economic

governance: Knowledge, education and personal
data in the UN's System of National Accounts

Kean Birch

To cite this article: Kean Birch (07 Nov 2023): Assetization as a mode of techno-economic
governance: Knowledge, education and personal data in the UN's System of National Accounts,
Economy and Society, DOI: 10.1080/03085147.2023.2264064

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2023.2264064

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Economy and Society
https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2023.2264064

Assetization as a mode of
techno-economic
governance: Knowledge,
education and personal data
in the UN’s System of
National Accounts

Kean Birch

Abstract

Assets are made through the configuration of technoscientific and political-

economic (or techno-economic) relations, claims and practices; a process increas-
ingly conceptualized as ‘assetization’. The UN’s System of National Accounts
(SNA) – a set of national accounting standards – defines assets as ‘entities that
must be owned by some unit, or units, and from which economic benefits are
derived by their owner(s) by holding or using them over a period of time’.
Accounting standards like the SNA are implicated in the construction of assets
through their ‘extension of the asset boundary’, which happens periodically as
accounting standards are revised and updated to better reflect changing business
practices. Assetization, then, entails more than an analysis of the transformation

Kean Birch, Institute for Technoscience & Society, York University, 4700 Keele Street,
Toronto M3J1P3, Ontario, Canada. E-mail: kean@yorku.ca

Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited,

trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article dis-
tributed 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, pro-
vided the original work is properly cited. The terms on which this
article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manu-
script in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent.
2 Economy and Society

of something into an asset, it can also be conceptualized as a mode of governance

in which social actors change their world. To make this argument, I examine the
SNA’s treatment of knowledge, education and personal data: respectively, rede-
fined as an asset (e.g. intellectual property product); treated as a quasi-asset (e.g.
human capital); and subject to continued debate (e.g. digital data). In exploring
the SNA’s accounting standards, I show how assetization reconfigures the gov-
ernance of knowledge, education and personal data, often in problematic ways.

Keywords: assetization; governance; research & development; human capital;

digital personal data; national accounting.

Introduction

Periodically, the UN’s Statistical Division releases a revision of the System of

National Accounts (SNA), a little known but important conceptual and
measurement framework for calculating global and national economic activity
(OECD, 2017). The SNA is a set of national accounting standards organized
by the Intersecretariat Working Group on National Accounts (ISWGNA),
consisting of the European Commission, International Monetary Fund,
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, United
Nations and World Bank. Following their revision, these national accounting
standards are gradually adopted around the world. Following the rollout of
the SNA, statistical concepts and measurements are standardized across
different countries, thereby underpinning economic decisions and policymak-
ing across countries, institutions and businesses (Rassier, 2013). The revision
of the SNA – first published in 1953 and then revised in 1960, 1964, 1968,
1993 and 2008 – both reflects changing political-economic dynamics (e.g.
responding to changing corporate accounting practices) and impacts those
same political-economic dynamics (e.g. through macroeconomic policy
decisions) (Lequiller & Blades, 2014). Analytically, these SNA revisions
play an important constitutive role in political-economic governance
(Miller & Rose, 1990).
An important revision of SNA2008 was the change in the treatment of
research and development (R&D) and creative works. Previously, R&D
was treated as ‘intermediate consumption’ (see SNA, 1993), while
SNA2008 specifically ‘extended’ the asset boundary to conceptualize R&D
as ‘capital formation’ (StatCan, 2015). This was significant because it
changed the understanding, measurement and treatment of R&D from
something that is used once (i.e. as an intermediate good) to being an
asset that is ‘used repeatedly or continuously in production processes for
more than one year’ (SNA, 2008, p. 196). A similar change had happened
in the SNA1993 with software. In 2008, then, knowledge was turned into
asset, in accounting terms at least (Birch, 2017a): it was reframed as an
investment category (rather than intermediate consumption), eventually
changing the way R&D spending is understood by businesses and
 Kean Birch: Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance 3

governments. As Haskel and Westlake (2018) note, these national accounting

changes have significant economic effects: ‘In the United States, for
example, the capitalization of software added about 1.1 percent to 1999
US GDP and R&D added 2.5 percent to 2012 GDP’ (p. 43). Consequently,
this conceptual and measurement framework changes the way we under-
stand something like investment in knowledge production and changes the
way we understand the governance of knowledge production.
My contention in this paper is that the extension of the asset boundary in
SNA2008 is an example of ‘assetization’, defined as the transformation of
something into an asset (Birch, 2017a, 2017b; Birch & Muniesa, 2020).
Almost anything can be transformed into an asset with the right techno-econ-
omic arrangements, and accounting standards are important to this process
(Chiapello, 2019; Mennicken & Power, 2015). Changes in accountings stan-
dards are implicated in the assetization of knowledge represented by the
SNA2008 extension of the asset boundary to R&D. As noted, there is a
dual change here: first, something (e.g. knowledge) is being reconfigured as
an asset; and second, how we then understand and act upon (i.e. govern)
that something is being reconfigured as a result of our understanding and
framing of it as an asset. Assetization, then, can be conceptualized as a
mode of techno-economic governance that is defined by this transformation
process (Miller & Rose, 1990). Even though social actors construct assets
through epistemic definitions and concepts, which are central to the making
of assets, these epistemic changes have a very real material life of their
own, such that social actors are subject to new political-economic imperatives.
The question that motivates this paper, then, is not so much how something
gets turned into an asset, but rather how does this transformation change
the governance of the thing being assetized?
I focus on the ways that the SNA (i.e. national accounting standard)
has extended the asset boundary through the conceptualization of three
different political-economic objects policymakers and others have found
difficult to define: (1) knowledge, redefined as investment in R&D in
the SNA2008; (2) education and training, subject to ongoing debate
and redefinition as ‘human capital’ in and beyond SNA2008; and (3) per-
sonal data, currently under debate in the ongoing SNA2025 revision.
Focusing on these three objects helps to highlight the anomalies and
societal implications of assetization. I start the paper with a discussion
of the recent critical and constructivist literature on assets and assetiza-
tion, positioning it in relation to debates about ‘governing economic
life’ (Miller & Rose, 1990). I then turn to the SNA in order to
examine how knowledge, education and personal data are being defined
and reframed as assets. I analyse how the definition and conceptualization
of assets and the asset boundary in the SNA have changed over time,
focusing on the 1993 and 2008 SNA reports and the forthcoming 2025
SNA revision. I finish by considering the governance implications of
this extension of the asset boundary.
4 Economy and Society

Assetization as governance

The term governance can be confusing and contradictory, especially when it

comes to disentangling its use as an analytical term from its manifestation as
an empirical phenomenon to be studied (Bevir, 2013; Pierre & Peters, 2020).
I therefore start this analytical discussion from Bevir’s (2013) point that govern-
ance relates to ‘all processes of governing, whether undertaken by a govern-
ment, market, or network’ (p. 1). In particular, I am interested in governance
as a concern with what Miller and Rose (1990) called the governing of economic
life. Drawing on Foucault’s notion of governmentality, Miller and Rose (1990)
were interested in how ‘power is exercised today through a multitude of
agencies and techniques’, not all of which are bounded by the ‘executives
and bureaucracies of the formal organs of state’ (p. 1). Moreover, they
argued that there is a need ‘to pay particular attention to the role accorded to
“indirect” mechanisms for aligning economic, social, and personal conduct
with socio-political objectives’ (p. 2). Thinking about governance as ‘governing’
provides a useful analytical lens and starting point for examining national
accounting standards that are not developed by ‘formal organs of state’ but
rather established through the coordination of multiple intergovernmental
agencies which draw on a range of experts and expertise to establish acceptable
and credible accounting standards. My particular focus in this paper is on the
configuration of knowledge claims, techniques, devices and suchlike that con-
stitute the governance of the political-economic objects we call ‘assets’.
Assets have come under increasing analytical focus recently. The last few
years have witnessed a growing intellectual interest in assets and especially in
the process of assetization, defined as the transformation of things into
assets. Much of this intellectual interest has been driven by critical and con-
structivist scholars examining the technical and political-economic intricacies
of the assetization process, the asset form and the asset condition (Birch,
2015; Birch, 2017b; Birch & Muniesa, 2020; Muniesa et al., 2017). Building
on an intellectual lineage stretching back over a century (see Birch &
Muniesa, 2020; Muniesa et al., 2017; Nitzan & Bichler, 2009), this literature
includes scholars in science and technology studies (e.g. Birch, 2017a, 2017b;
Birch & Muniesa, 2020; Birch & Tyfield, 2013; Delvenne, 2021; Muniesa
et al., 2017), critical data studies (e.g. Birch et al., 2021), feminism (e.g.
Strauss, 2023), geography (e.g. Birch & Ward, 2022; Bridge et al., 2020;
Ouma, 2020), political economy (e.g. Langley, 2021; Ward & Swyngedouw,
2018), socio-legal studies (e.g. Dreyfuss & Frankel, 2015; Pistor, 2019), political
ecology (e.g. Ducastel & Anseeuw, 2017), sociology (e.g. Chiapello, 2019; Tell-
mann, 2020, 2022), history (e.g. Levy, 2017), education studies (Komljenovic,
2021), business and management studies (e.g. Geiger & Gross, 2021) and phil-
osophy (e.g. Feher, 2018). As this literature demonstrates, there is an increasing
research programme examining the ‘how’ of assetization; that is, how very
different things are turned into assets with the right techno-economic
arrangements.
 Kean Birch: Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance 5

Assetization also reconfigures how we frame, manage and govern societal

resources. As noted above, my argument is that there is a dual transformation
happening with assetization. While a ‘thing’ can be turned into an asset through
the reconfiguration of the techno-economic arrangements that define some-
thing as a specific object or entity, and accounting is central to this process
(Kurunmäki, 1999; Meyer, 1973), such a reconfiguration also changes how
we understand, manage and govern that thing. Assetization, in this sense, is
also a mode of techno-economic governance that emerges from the very trans-
formation of a thing into an asset: that is, governance through assetization. As a
mode of techno-economic governance, assetization entails four important shifts
in the governance of societal resources (as assets). First, we need to understand
the role of metaphors and narratives in the identification of things to be asse-
tized; second, we need to examine how assets are defined and constructed;
third, we need to unpack the temporal expectations that adhere to assets; and
finally, we need to analyse the relational constitution of assets.
First, metaphors and narratives are central to an understanding of govern-
ance through assetization, reflecting the importance of language and discourse
(see Miller & Rose, 1990). Chiapello (2015, 2019) highlights how metaphors
frame things as capital – e.g. ‘human’, ‘natural’, etc. (see Komljenovic, 2021;
Levidow, 2020; Levy, 2017). Metaphors like human capital can influence
accounting frameworks when it comes to what constitutes an investment in
and a return on education. Sociologists like Beckert (2016) have similarly
stressed the need to analyse the symbolic value of tradable goods and services;
here, Beckert argues that symbolic value is performative in that ‘fictional’
expectations configure things as economic entities (e.g. assets) in particular
ways. Others have focused on the moral orders underlying assetization, includ-
ing Ouma (2020) whose work on farmland investment highlights the morally
contested nature of assetization. As noted by Power (1992), the deployment
of metaphors and narratives reflects the establishment of ‘social credibility’
by experts making technical claims: he stressed that ‘the “how” of asset
measurement and recognition is inextricably linked to the status of “who”
does it’ (p. 40). For a thing to be assetized, it must be discursively framed
and understood as having the potential to become an asset through the deploy-
ment of metaphors and narratives by credible experts to identify it as an object
that can be governed in a particular way; for example, education can be ident-
ified as an investment by using the metaphor of ‘human capital’ (Gregory &
Sadowski, 2021).
Second, thinking about governance through assetization entails analysing
assets as techno-economic constructions (Birch & Muniesa, 2020; also Pistor,
2019). A thing has to be defined, bounded and constructed as an asset,
which requires the delineation and enforcement of a ‘boundary’ that dis-
tinguishes it from other objects (Mazzucato, 2018; see also Meyer, 1973; and
Kurunmäki, 1999, on the construction of ‘entity boundaries’). Such boundaries
are effects of knowledge claims (Gieryn, 1999), especially accounting knowl-
edge. As several scholars note (e.g. Chiapello, 2015; MacKenzie, 2009;
6 Economy and Society

Mennicken & Power, 2015; Power, 1992), accounting has this constitutive or
performative character to it, in that it does not simply describe the world.
Rather, it is implicated in the transformation of the world to reflect the assump-
tions of the knowledge claim itself (Callon, 1998). Accounting, moreover, con-
figures value and valuation; by this, I mean the legal and political-economic
operations that create rights to revenues and the recursive governance of
those operations through the enforcement of those rights (Cherizola, 2021).
As Muniesa (2012) argues, how we value something happens simultaneously
with how we construct the thing we are valuing. Hence, how we construct
assets configures the ways we govern societal resources, and the fact we
value things in certain ways (e.g. as future revenues) ends up configuring
how we understand the governance of those societal resources (Muniesa &
Doganova, 2020). Consequently, assetization entails developing a particular
way of ‘seeing’ things as if they are financial investments (in assets) and, con-
sequently, governing them as such – what Muniesa et al. (2017) call the ‘asset
condition’.
Third, assets are defined by the temporal expectations that define them and
define the governance of them (Tellmann, 2020, 2022). Accounting definitions
like the International Accounting Standards (IAS) characterize assets as ‘a
resource controlled by the entity as a result of past events and from which
future economic benefits are to flow to the entity’ (quoted in Birch &
Muniesa, 2020, p. 3). An asset is constructed and governed as an expectation
and entitlement to a flow of future income, often through the deployment of
techno-economic mechanisms to smooth out any lumps or bumps in that mon-
etary flow over time (Leyshon & Thrift, 2007) or to align social actors across
different geographies and temporalities (Miller & Rose, 1990). Governance
through assetization entails an entitlement or claim to future income, which
depends upon the enforcement of that entitlement or claim through time so
it can have value and be valued (Cherizola, 2021): the enforcement of the
claim makes the asset valuable. As Pistor (2019) notes, assets create privileges
for their holders through their ‘durability’; that is, the extension of entitlements
or claims over time. This means that future revenue expectations have to be
made durable as entitlements, which entails a ‘durational’ temporal manage-
ment and governance in Tellmann’s (2020) framing. Assets, then, are claims
on the future that end up defining the governance of societal resources; that
is, controlling or owning an asset is tied into enforcing a political-economic con-
figuration that ensures an asset generates the revenues the asset owner/control-
ler can collect (Adkins et al., 2020). This, necessarily, locks in social actors to
meeting the expectations of owners/controllers, whether the former wish to
be bound by those expectations or not (Dreyfuss & Frankel, 2015).
Finally, assetization does not happen in isolation. Political-economic
knowledge claims (e.g. ‘the value of x is y’) and their performative impli-
cations (e.g. ‘go buy x’) are relational and situated. As an example, value
and valuation are constituted by knowledge claims that reflect a set of collec-
tive expectations, entitlements and organizational processes (Birch, 2017b;
 Kean Birch: Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance 7

Mennicken & Power, 2015; Muniesa et al., 2017; Styhre, 2015). Working out
the value of an asset by doing valuation is relational. As historian Levy (2017)
notes, a rethinking of asset value happened at the end of the nineteenth
century in which social actors debated how to do valuation. Their answer
was that ‘to capitalize the expected pecuniary income streams of the newly
consolidated asset’ required it be ‘discounted against a uniform market inter-
est rate’, which was ‘something historically novel, being made possible by the
recent geographical integration of capital markets’ (Levy, 2017, p. 498). An
asset’s value is always constituted by its relation to other assets and a generally
expected long-running interest rate to which future expected returns on
investments can be discounted (Doganova & Muniesa, 2015; Piketty, 2014).
Asset values are, then, necessarily governed through the management of an
array of social actors enrolled in this wider techno-economic ecosystem
(Miller & Rose, 1990), including analysts, investors, financiers, market-
makers, news media and so on (Horvath & Klinkmüller, 2019). As such, gov-
ernance through assetization entails a societal transformation in the under-
standing of societal resources for them to accrue and retain value, leading
to the entrenchment of particular social interests in the governing of the
economy.

Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance: Analysing

the UN’s System of National Accounts (SNA)

Next, I examine how the SNA defines and conceptualizes assets in order to
analyse assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance, especially in
the treatment of knowledge, education and personal information as resources
governable as assets (i.e. R&D, human capital and digital data).

The SNA and the asset boundary

The SNA has its origins in the post-World War II construction of an inter-
national liberal order, being established in 1947 by the UN’s Statistical Com-
mission to account for national gross domestic product (GDP). Vanoli (2005)
provides a more detailed history of national accounting and the early years of
the SNA. The SNA was developed and promulgated by the UN’s Statistics
Division, forming an ‘internationally agreed standard set of recommendations
on how to compile measures of economic activity’.1 The initial SNA was pro-
duced in 1953 and has subsequently been revised in 1960, 1964, 1968, 1993 and
the latest iteration in 2008. A further revision is planned for 2025. At present,
and at least since the 1993 revision, it is organized and managed by an
ISWGNA representing the UN, IMF, World Bank, OECD and European
Commission. Although the SNA standards are not mandatory, they provide
the basis for many countries and international institutions to coordinate their
8 Economy and Society

national accounting practices and economic forecasts, including revising them

in light of changing concepts and definitions.
Although concerned with national accounting, the SNA standards reflect
business accounting practices, which feed into the revisions. Although there
are differences between national and business accounting (OECD, 2017), the
SNA standards play an important role in shaping how both governments and
businesses conceptualize, understand and govern economic activity (Vanoli,
2005). For example, the similarities between business and national accounting
are evident in their definition of assets. In business accounting terms, an asset is
defined by IAS as:

… a resource controlled by an entity as a result of past events and from which

future economic benefits are expected to flow to the entity.

And in national accounting terms, an asset is defined by the SNA (2008, p. 42)
as:
… a store of value representing a benefit or series of benefits accruing to the
economic owner by holding or using the entity over a period of time.

Both definitions conceptualize assets as a resource/entity that generates future

benefits for its owner/controller over a period of time. Critical to these definitions
is that assets are both revenues streams and claims on those revenue streams,
which can be capitalized by the owner/controller. Assetization as governance
rests on this dual quality. This has been theorized by Birch and Tyfield
(2013), Birch (2017b), Pistor (2019) and Birch and Muniesa (2020) in their
characterization of assets as legal constructs that are made through the con-
figuration of techno-economic claims, practices, etc. Revenues streams have
to be made, just as claims on those revenue streams have to be constructed;
this entails the construction of boundaries to distinguish political-economic
objects (e.g. asset) and entities (e.g. organization) from one another and under-
lying processes (e.g. production) (see Kurunmäki, 1999), but without necess-
arily entailing a separation of the revenue streams and claims on them from
their constitutive techno-economic relations and contexts. This contrasts
with commodities (see Braun, 2020), and highlights the importance of thinking
through assetization as a distinct transformation process and form of govern-
ance. Castree (2003) notes that a commodity can be physically and morally sep-
arated from its producers and ‘supporting context’, such that the commodity
form reflects a homogenized process meaning that it does not matter who pro-
duces it. This is not necessarily the case with assets, which may be valued pre-
cisely because of who produces them (e.g. music), their context (e.g.
infrastructure), and their qualities (e.g. wine variety), distinguishing them
from one another.
As well as a conceptual process for standardizing national accounting terms,
definitions and rules, the SNA is also political-normative in that it provides ‘the
 Kean Birch: Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance 9

building blocks of macroeconomic statistics forming a basis for economic analy-

sis and policy formulation’.2 As such, the SNA has an explicit role in the gov-
erning of economic life as theorized by Miller and Rose (1990), being part of the
‘vast statistical apparatus’ they argued underpins the ‘installation of a new set of
concepts by which to think of “the economy” as an economy’ (p. 12). In par-
ticular, the SNA plays an important role in defining and measuring the bound-
aries of economic activity, including the identification of what counts as an asset
(Gieryn, 1999; Mazzucato, 2018). For example, the earliest SNA edition ‘con-
fined’ discussion of assets to tangible assets in capital formation (SNA, 1953).
In accounting, boundary-making is a fundamental concern (Gieryn, 1999;
see Mennicken & Power, 2015; Power, 1992). As Mazzucato (2018) argues,
the way we define the ‘production boundary’, for example, around economic
activity largely determines the way we understand, measure and make legible
notions of value and constitute valuation practices of different social activities.
Alongside a production boundary, the SNA2008 also defines an ‘asset bound-
ary’; that is, an accounting designation to distinguish between intermediate
goods and services (which end up accounted for in final production) from
investments in things which generate future benefits (i.e. assets) (BEA,
2015). Assets are made through the development and deployment of accounting
concepts, definitions and measurements (Birch, 2017a; Birch & Muniesa, 2020;
MacKenzie, 2009; Mennicken & Power, 2015; Power, 1992); notably, these can
and do change over time through an extension of the asset boundary, defined as:

The boundary line between those products that are retained in the economy and
are used for consumption and those products that are used for capital formation
is known as the asset boundary. (SNA, 2008, p. 198)

The distinguishing feature of an asset, here, is that it is a ‘good or service’ that

gets used in production over a specific temporal period, namely beyond a single
year. Because these goods and services are not used up in production, the issue
of ownership/control becomes particularly pertinent, since it determines who
can claim future revenues (see Pistor, 2019).
The significance of ownership/control is evident in a subtle shift in the
language and discursive framing of the asset boundary between SNA1993
and SNA2008. Reflecting Power’s (1992) point about the importance of
language and discourse in accounting, this shift illustrates how metaphors, nar-
ratives and expectations help to constitute assets (see Beckert, 2016; Chiapello,
2015, 2019). In the SNA1993, for example, ownership/control was important
for defining the asset boundary, as shown below:

However, the ownership criterion is important for determining which naturally

occurring – i.e. non-produced – assets are included in the System. Naturally
occurring assets such as land, mineral deposits, fuel reserves, uncultivated
forests or other vegetation and wild animals are included in the balance sheets
10 Economy and Society

provided that institutional units are exercising effective ownership rights over
them. (SNA, 1993, p. 7)

Similarly, in SNA2008, ownership/control is important for defining assets, but

the language changes. Instead of using the term ‘asset’, SNA2008 refers to
‘resources’ that can be turned into assets with suitable techno-economic
arrangements (e.g. ownership claims). This reframing highlights the impor-
tance of the analytical lens we use to understand resources and how this lens
plays an integral part in the transformation and governance of something as a
political-economic object (e.g. asset). Consequently, this reframing affords
the possibility of ‘extending’ the asset boundary rather than treating an
object’s status (as an asset) as an essential quality:

However, the ownership criterion is important for determining which natural

resources are treated as assets in the SNA. Natural resources such as land,
mineral deposits, fuel reserves, uncultivated forests or other vegetation and
wild animals are included in the balance sheets provided that institutional
units are exercising effective ownership rights over them, that is, are actually
in a position to be able to benefit from them. (SNA, 2008, p. 7)

Changing the asset boundary in SNA2008 illustrates the importance of concep-

tualizing the ‘making’ of assets undertaken in assetization studies (e.g. Birch &
Muniesa, 2020), rather than assuming that assets have inherent or essential
qualities. While SNA1993 used the terminology of ‘natural asset’ throughout,
SNA2008 uses the terminology of ‘natural resource’. In defining ‘nature’ as a
resource, SNA2008 illustrates how an asset is constituted – made legible and
measurable – and governed in and through accounting concepts, metrics and
practices; that is, it entails the techno-economic configuration and governance
of something as an asset (e.g. property rights, future revenues, technology, rela-
tive prices, etc.).

SNA2008: Extending the asset boundary to include R&D

Although there are differences between the definition and conceptualization of

assets and the asset boundary in SNA1993 and SNA2008, the major change
implemented in 2008 was the extension of the asset boundary to include
research and development (R&D) and creative works (i.e. ‘knowledge’).3
This change was gradually implemented in different countries: for example,
2013 in the United States and 2014 in the United Kingdom. Prior to 2008,
R&D and creative works had been treated as intermediate spending or con-
sumption in the production process. As SNA2008 (p. 8) notes:

The distinction between intermediate consumption and gross capital formation

[i.e. creation of an asset] depends on whether the goods and services involved are
 Kean Birch: Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance 11

completely used up in the accounting period or not. If they are, the use of them
is a current transaction recorded as intermediate consumption; if not it is an
accumulation transaction recorded in the capital account.

As this SNA2008 indicates, the difference between intermediate consumption

and capital formation is that the latter reflects a temporal distinction between
immediate use and use in production ‘for more than one year’. The
SNA2008 change was meant to address a conceptual gap identified and recog-
nized as a problem in SNA1993 (UN Statistics Division, 2006), but which was
largely considered to be a technical issue to do with measurement, which could
not be resolved at the time. For instance, SNA1993 stated that:

Research and development are undertaken with the objective of improving

efficiency or productivity or deriving other future benefits so that they are
inherently investment – rather than consumption – type activities … In order
to classify such activities as investment type it would be necessary to have
clear criteria for delineating them from other activities, to be able to identify
and classify the assets produced, to be able to value such assets in an economi-
cally meaningful way and to know the rate at which they depreciate over time.
In practice it is difficult to meet all these requirements. (pp. 179-180, emphasis
added)

Notably, R&D was characterized as ‘inherently investment’, meaning that

R&D should be treated as the construction of assets rather than intermediate
goods and services. However, it was not treated as such. This section of
SNA1993 highlighted the difficulty in identifying the criteria to characterize
R&D as a produced asset. In particular, the inability to value the resulting
‘asset’ and to work out how it depreciates over time posed significant account-
ing problems. As with other scholars who analyse accounting knowledge
claims (e.g. Chiapello, 2015; MacKenzie, 2009; Mennicken & Power, 2015;
Power, 1992), these changes from 1993 to 2008 illustrate how such accounting
knowledge claims come to constitute and construct something as political-
economic objects (e.g. assets), underpinned by certain understandings of
value and valuation practices (e.g. depreciation, discounting) (Doganova &
Muniesa, 2015).
The SNA2008 change was not uncontroversial, nor was it uncontested.
Discussions about extending the asset boundary to R&D and creative works
was undertaken by the Canberra II Group, which is part of the UN Statistics
Division. Operating between 2003 and 2007, the Group’s mandate was to do
the research needed to update SNA1993. An Issue Paper prepared by the
Group’s Secretary Charles Aspden, who was from the OECD, for the Advi-
sory Expert Group (AEG) of the SNA recommended that ‘1993 SNA should
be changed to recognise the outputs of R&D as assets’ and, as a result, that the
‘definition of an asset should be reviewed to ensure it covers the assets of non-
market producers adequately’ (IMF, 2005, p. 2). Despite these
12 Economy and Society

recommendations, however, the Issue Paper contains an appendix in which it

notes that ‘there is a significant minority who feel that some R&D does not
result in new assets’ (IMF, 2005, p. 26). Debate centred on whether R&D
that is ‘disseminated freely’ should be considered an asset: at issue was
whether such freely distributed outputs – knowledge as a collective and rela-
tional process (Fuller, 2002) – meet the ‘economic benefit’ criteria of an asset,
since it is likely they would not be ownable/controllable and, therefore, dif-
ficult to accrue economic benefit from without intellectual property rights
(Birch, 2017b; Kang, 2020).
A few writers have outlined the implications of these SNA2008 revisions
(e.g. Birch, 2017a; Frase, 2013; Haskel & Westlake, 2018; Mazzucato, 2018),
as have a number of governance organizations (e.g. OECD, 2010; Rassier,
2013). In particular, the OECD has produced a Handbook (2010) that outlines
how to apply the SNA changes, such as how to value intangible assets using
market values; for example, using similar assets that have been traded or as a
summation of production costs if there are no similar assets (OECD, 2010,
p. 18). While it might seem like an arcane national accounting issue, this
change has had significant policy and political-economic impacts. For
example, in August 2013 The Economist magazine pointed out that as a result
of the SNA2008 change, ‘This week America’s GDP rose by $560 billion, or
3.6%, mainly because the ‘boundary’ that defines what counts as an economic
asset was moved’ (The Economist, 2013).

SNA2008 and beyond: Ambiguities around extending the asset boundary to

‘human capital’

While the asset boundary was extended to include R&D and creative works
in SNA2008, the same was not done for ‘human capital’ (see Moulton &
Mayerhauser, 2015). Human capital was specifically excluded from the
extension to R&D and creative works (SNA, 2008, p. 206), but it was incor-
porated through so-called ‘Satellite Accounts’ covering issues outside the
general system. Human capital is interesting because of this specific exclu-
sion. SNA2008 noted that, ‘It is difficult to envisage ‘ownership rights’ in
connection with people, and even if this were sidestepped, the question of
valuation is not very tractable’ (p. 43). While knowledge, as a collectively
produced and legitimated process (Fuller, 2002; Tyfield, 2012), was rede-
fined as an asset, the human activities entailed in training and education
were not because they are not deemed ownable, being embodied in individ-
ual persons.
Yet, education and training are still framed as an asset, specifically in terms
of the metaphorical denotation of ‘capital’ to indicate an investment rather than
intermediate spending (Chiapello, 2019).4 Human capital, as theorized by neo-
classical economists like Gary Becker, is premised on the idea that spending on
personal education and training is an ‘investment’ that leads to future returns to
 Kean Birch: Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance 13

its ‘owner’ (Cooper, 2017). The Canberra II Group Issue Paper mentioned
above, and dealing with R&D, stated that:

This paper only deals with the question of whether R&D should be regarded as
investment. The ISWGNA has decided already that there should be no con-
sideration given in the update as to whether human capital should be classified
as an asset in the system, and by implication staff training. (IMF, 2005, p. 3)

Earlier incarnations of the SNA had also addressed whether ‘human capital’
should be treated as an asset. For example, SNA1993 considered whether ‘edu-
cation’ was an investment and therefore asset. While SNA1993 noted that edu-
cation and training increase the ‘productive potential’ of individuals, they are
‘not produced’ but rather ‘acquired through learning’ and therefore cannot
be considered as ‘processes of production’. Specifically ‘embodied’ in individ-
uals, not institutional units, human capital cannot be sold on a market or traded
between units – at least, that is, in most cases (e.g. sports players might be con-
sidered an asset here – see Nappert & Plante, 2023). Even defining the value of
human capital in the SNA was deemed problematic, since using proxies like
remuneration incorporates time and effort, not just a payment for the use of
an asset (Moulton & Mayerhauser, 2015).
While not much changed between SNA1993 and SNA2008 when it came to
defining and conceptualizing human capital, there was some acknowledgement
of dissatisfaction: ‘This treatment of education costs is consistent with the pro-
duction and asset boundaries of the SNA but not all users of the SNA find it
satisfactory in all instances’ (SNA, 2008, p. 8). Alternative conventions for
defining human capital were encouraged in the 2008 revision using ‘satellite
accounts’, which are outlined in Chapter 29 at the end of the overall report
(pp. 523-544). Satellite accounts are meant to provide some flexibility for enact-
ing the SNA accounting standards – reflecting what STS scholars call ongoing
boundary work (Gieryn, 1999). Sector D of this chapter outlines the ‘extension
of the scope of assets’ entailed in deploying satellite accounts:

The borderline between intermediate consumption, final consumption and

capital formation may also be modified in various ways. Two often mentioned
cases refer to human capital and consumer durables. If at least part of final con-
sumption on education and health were treated as fixed capital formation, the
corresponding central framework transactions would be reclassified from con-
sumption to fixed capital formation resulting in human capital assets. (SNA,
2008, p. 527)

As this quote illustrates, treating education consumption as the creation of an

asset requires a reclassification of consumption, thereby extending the asset
boundary. It is an example of how assets are constructed through the identifi-
cation and recognition of techno-economic categories (e.g. asset boundaries)
(Power, 1992).
14 Economy and Society

The SNA discussion here is not about whether human capital should be
treated in a particular way but that it can be treated in different ways – as
already illustrated by the distinction between SNA1993 and SNA2008 with
R&D. In a Guide on measuring human capital, produced by the UN Economic
Commission for Europe at the request of European statistical agencies
(UNECE, 2016), the authors highlight some of the ways to conceptualize
and measure human capital as an asset. This Guide reflects on the definitions
and concepts used in SNA2008, noting that there are several measurement
approaches (and issues) with regards to human capital including: the scope
of estimates, its heterogeneity and its aggregation. It goes on to emphasize
that only returns that accrue to individuals are taken into consideration, and
notes an inconsistency in SNA2008:

… human capital differs from the usual types of capital in that it is fully embo-
died in persons, and as such is an entity that cannot be sold as a separate item on
the market. (UNECE, 2016, p. 12)

Human capital is, in this sense, acquired and embodied, rather than an alienable
good or service (Birch & Muniesa, 2020). As such, it cannot be transferred to
another person. Despite these attempts to think through human capital as an
asset in the SNA, significant conceptual and definitional ambiguities remain
unresolved.

SNA2025: Unpacking plans to extend the asset boundary to digital data

The ISWGNA that revises the SNA – with the assistance of an Advisory
Expert Group on National Accounts (aka AEG) – is currently updating the
SNA for the release of a full revision in 2025. As part of this revision, the
ISWGNA is considering around 35 issues, which were identified in July
2020. Most of these issues focus on three substantive political-economic
areas: digitalization, globalization and well-being and sustainability.5 Of
these, digitalization represents an interesting case because of the growing
importance placed on digital technologies and, especially, digital data by policy-
makers and others. There are frequent metaphorical allusions to digital data,
especially digital personal data, as being the ‘new oil’ underpinning our econ-
omies; for example, in May 2017 The Economist magazine made the following
claim on its frontpage: ‘The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil,
but data’ (The Economist, 2017). Consequently, a bevy of international
policy organizations are engaging with the question of how to define and
value digital data (e.g. OECD, 2022).
The ISWGNA started the revision process with the help of the AEG and is
seeking input from various stakeholders before final publication.6 According to
the ISWGNA, they are consulting widely through various outreach and con-
sultation processes and events, trying to reach statistical experts, academics,
 Kean Birch: Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance 15

policymakers and business. Many of these expert and consultation contri-

butions and materials are already published on the SNA website, so it is poss-
ible to examine conceptual and definitional developments and differences.
Under ‘digitalization’, the ISWGNA is considering issues ranging from
‘Framework for a satellite account of the digital economy’ – akin to the
approach taken with human capital – to ‘Recording of data and valuation of
free assets and free services’. The latter is further split between: (a) ‘Recording
and valuation of data in National Accounts’ and (b) ‘Treatment of free digital
assets and services’.7
Of particular interest to debates about assetization, especially of personal
data (e.g. Beauvisage & Mellet, 2020; Birch et al., 2021), is the conceptualiz-
ation and definition of digital data in this SNA2025 revision process. In
2021, the ISWGNA reported to the UN Economic and Social Council on
their progress on a range of issues, noting the establishment of a task team to
look at the ‘Role of data and the SNA asset boundary’ (UN ESC, 2021,
p. 17). The conceptual discussion about the treatment of digital data as an
asset is evident in the 14th Meeting of the AEG in October 2020. At this
meeting, the ISWGNA Task Team on Digitalization presented a paper on
the recording and valuing of data, making several recommendations and con-
ceptual framings:

a. Data is the result of a production process.

b. For practical reasons, focus is on digital data. Non-digital data is out of
scope.
c. Data is distinct from ‘observable phenomena’, which are input for data.
d. Observable phenomena are non-produced and in general have no
value, except if purchased. They do not affect the core accounts.
e. ‘Long-lived’ data (i.e. those used in production for more than one
year) is an asset and as such should be capitalized in the national
accounts.
f. ‘Short-lived’ data also exist, is produced and have economic value … .
g. Data is subject to economic ownership, valuation and depreciation.
(AEG, 2020, p. 1)

Here the SNA2025 discussions define digital data as an asset where it fits the
temporal characteristics of the asset form (e.g. lifespan beyond one year), as well
as fitting within the asset boundary defined by ownership, valuation and dis-
counting (SNA2008). As part of the assetization of digital data (Birch &
Muniesa, 2020), this conceptual definition of digital data – as the digital collec-
tion and storage of ‘observable phenomena’ – is being rolled-out and adopted in
subsequent debates about the valuation of digital data (e.g. OECD, 2022). This
reframing of digital data as an asset is distinct from the same process with R&D
and human capital; in particular, there is a clearer emphasis on the relational
dimensions of data. As scholars have noted, assetization is a collective or rela-
tional process in which an asset, and especially its valuation, are always
16 Economy and Society

contextual, specifically relating to other assets within a techno-economic

system (Styhre, 2015). For example:

Ignoring the very rare occurrences of a single valuable observable phenomenon,

most individual observable phenomena by themselves do not represent a ‘store
of value representing a benefit or series of benefits accruing to the economic
owner by holding or using the entity over a period of time’. … For all these
reasons, single observable phenomena do not meet the definition of an asset.
(AEG, 2020, p. 18)

As such, ‘data’ are an asset where it entails the collection and recording of mul-
tiple observable phenomena (e.g. user data). Here, data are very much relational
(Viljoen, 2021), or at least its value is defined by its relationality (e.g. data ana-
lytics requiring population data).

Implications of assetization as a mode of techno-economic

governance

The SNA process has sought or is seeking to conceptualize and reframe knowl-
edge production (i.e. R&D), education (i.e. human capital), and personal infor-
mation (i.e. digital data) as an asset. This SNA process has not only contributed
to the transformation of different things into an asset, it also changes the ways
we govern these things (i.e. knowledge, education and personal information).
First, there are implications to using metaphors and narratives to redefine
something like education as an investment, and hence ‘capital’. Both
SNA1993 and SNA2008 emphasize that it is difficult to treat human capital
as an asset for several reasons. As Birch and Muniesa (2020) note, assets are
not the consequence of some inherent or embodied quality. If we want to con-
sider human capital as an asset, then this necessitates a metaphorical or rhetori-
cal move and the deployment of social credibility to define and thereby
constitute something else – e.g. education – as an object of economic govern-
ance (Miller & Rose, 1990; Power, 1992). As a metaphor for education and
training, however, human capital obscures the fact that it is the education
and training providers who should really be considered as asset owners since
they sell access to education and training to individuals (cf. individuals as inves-
tors in themselves as assets – see Feher, 2018). This is evident in the booming
world of education technology, which is transforming a range of educational
practices into assets (Komljenovic, 2021). We may be focusing on the
‘wrong’ social actors (e.g. learners) when it comes to governing educational
accessibility and inclusivity; rather, we need to pay more attention to what is
actually being turned into assets.
Second, how assets are made entails not only a conceptual orientation
towards certain notions of ownership but also a need to restructure governance
to then constitute that expectation: in particular, such restructuring
 Kean Birch: Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance 17

necessitates new means for measuring, comparing, and ranking the asset per-
formance of previously non-economic objects or entities (Mennicken &
Power, 2015). On the one hand, an asset brings ‘economic benefits’ to their
owners/controllers, which is not always measurable with knowledge, education
or personal information. On the other hand, an asset is an ‘economic’ ownership
right (i.e. claim on revenues), which can be separated from the thing under con-
sideration (e.g. knowledge) and its embodiment (e.g. as a collective and
common resource). Hence, the SNA2008 notes that it is not possible to
define human capital as an asset because ‘It is difficult to envisage ‘ownership
rights’ in connection with people’ (SNA, 2008, p. 43). Transforming knowl-
edge or education into intellectual property or human capital respectively,
even metaphorically (Chiapello, 2019; Power, 1992), requires that we contrac-
tually limit a person’s capacity to work; for example, through an exclusive
license like intellectual property (Kang, 2020), or work contract (Nappert &
Plante, 2023). Consequently, governance through assetization further centres
contractual arrangements in political-economic life, reinforcing an increasing
emphasis on transactional relations between social actors to the detriment of
collective political engagement in pursuit of shared goals.
Third, assets are defined by their temporality (Beckert, 2016; Muniesa &
Doganova, 2020; Tellmann, 2020, 2022). An asset is a claim on future revenues
resulting from past actions and valued through temporal discounting (Men-
nicken & Power, 2015). This is why Pistor (2019) notes that the ‘durability’
of claims is a defining feature of assets. The SNA’s conceptualization of
digital data, for example, differentiates between ‘long-lived’ data (an asset)
and ‘short-lived’ data (not an asset) (AEG, 2020). Configuring something as
an asset necessitates the creation of a temporal ‘revenue structure’, which
entails the roll-out of ‘devices of obligation’ according to Tellmann (2022,
p. 2). These devices tie revenues to the claims over a temporal duration and rep-
resent an important shift in the governance of political-economic objects;
specifically, an asset is an investment, meaning it falls under international
investment law rather than trade law. Consequently, assets are governed by
adjudication mechanisms like investor-state dispute settlement panels, which
are focused on protecting investor expectations against direct or indirect
‘expropriations’ (Dreyfuss & Frankel, 2015; Horvath & Klinkmüller, 2019).
Governance through assetization can entail a temporal lock-in to investor
logics, in which policy and political changes are deemed illegitimate if they
impact expected future revenues. To date, digital data is not considered an
asset or investment (Horvath & Klinkmüller, 2019), but as the SNA2025
process unfolds this could change with potentially problematic consequences
for states’ enforcement of data protection and privacy rights.
Finally, the relational dimension of the asset form further complicates the
relationship between how things are reconfigured and governed as assets. As
noted, things like knowledge, education and personal information are all rela-
tionally constituted: for example, knowledge is collectively produced, consti-
tuted and legitimated (Fuller, 2002); education is relationally organized
18 Economy and Society

(Komljenovic & Robertson, 2016); and personal information is relational

(Viljoen, 2021). This relationality is best illustrated with personal information
in the debates about digitalization in SNA2025. For example, the AEG discus-
sion about digital data ends with an important question for further consider-
ation by others in the SNA process: ‘Do you agree that data belong to their
producer (unless they are sold/licensed) and not to the persons/households
to which the underlying observable phenomena refer to?’ (AEG, 2020,
p. 19). This question points to an issue with personal information being some-
thing that is collected, recorded and stored, and thereby holding value, versus it
being something that the person it is about having a legitimate claim to (e.g.
privacy rights, property rights). Although personal information is currently
not claimable as property does not mean that it cannot be governed as such
with the right techno-economic arrangement, like contractual agreements
(Horvath & Klinkmüller, 2019). Being relational, personal information can
provide ‘economic benefits’ but only where it is made excludable so others
cannot access it, despite its origins in those very relationships that are then
occluded; this is a point emphasized by the OECD (2022, p. 10) in their discus-
sion about measuring the value of data.

Conclusion

I have analysed the extension of the so-called asset boundary in the System of
National Accounts (SNA) as part of the assetization of knowledge, education
and personal information: that is, their transformation into intellectual property
products, human capital and digital data respectively. This transformation is
not uncontested – as illustrated by debates about human capital – and is also
ongoing in the case of digital data. Building on the interdisciplinary literature
examining assetization (e.g. Birch & Muniesa, 2020), I outlined how changes in
accounting standards and frameworks like the SNA represent part of the
techno-economic configuration of new asset classes (Chiapello, 2019). My
aim was to unpack the anomalies, contradictions and societal implications of
assetization, illustrating how the redefinition and reframing of things as
assets can lead to problematic societal outcomes; for example, the importance
of an investor logic replacing other social values in the governance of societal
resources (Muniesa et al., 2017).
Assetization is a dual transformation. First, something is being transformed
into an asset through the reconfiguration of the techno-economic arrangements
that constitute assets, including: the narratives and metaphors that frame things
as political-economic objects; the configuration of devices, practices and
boundaries that constitute revenue streams and claims too them; the temporal
dimensions to the asset form; and the relationality of those assets with broader
economic systems. Second, how we understand, organize and manage that
transformed thing – now an asset – also changes as a result of rethinking
how we should govern societal resources. Although assetization has primarily
 Kean Birch: Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance 19

been deployed conceptually to study how things are turned into assets, it also
provides a useful political-normative approach for understanding the govern-
ance of technoscience and political economy: that is, governance through asse-
tization. Muniesa et al. (2017) call this political dimension of assets and
assetization the ‘asset condition’, which concerns the configuration of the pol-
itical-economic future. An asset has to be ‘delineated’ by their techno-economic
boundary and constituted by legal claims, technologies and materialities, and an
‘attributable scope’ (see also Pistor, 2019). Most importantly, an asset has an
economic value defined by its future revenues and often entailing the capitali-
zation of those future revenues through various discounting practices; as a
result, an investor logic comes to form a new common sense for how to
govern our economic lives.
The specific case of the SNA highlights a number of important governance
and analytical implications. From a governance standpoint, the SNA changes
are not simply conceptual or definitional adjustments in an ongoing statistical
process of tweaking national accounting practices so they become more accurate
over time. Changes to the SNA have real world impacts, although whether they
are performative or not is a question for future research. For example, Haskel
and Westlake (2018) highlight the political-economic impacts these SNA
changes have, especially in terms of increasing national GDP. Whether some-
thing is configured as an asset or not has real import when it comes to governing
the economy (Miller & Rose, 1990). Assets have become central political-econ-
omic objects in many societies (Adkins et al., 2020; Birch, 2015), suggesting
that assetization underpins an emerging political-economic regime. My analysis
provides one illustration of the implications this has for our lives. In particular,
the SNA2008 change in treatment of R&D is transforming how social actors
understand and manage innovation: technoscientific knowledge is treated and
governed as an asset, entailing the insertion of investment logics and calcu-
lations into R&D operations (Birch, 2017b). As I argue elsewhere, this
impacts how R&D is financed and the rationale for R&D, promoting innovation
that reinforces ownership/control rights and the generation of economic rents
(e.g. digital rights management) (Birch & Muniesa, 2020). Extending the asset
boundary to education and training and personal information would have
similar impacts.
Analytically, the SNA raises questions about how we govern societal
resources as assets and how we organize a society of assets. Such questions
help us understand assetization as a new mode of techno-economic governance.
In theorizing assets as claims to future revenues, we examine how those reven-
ues are constituted by the particular techno-economic configuration of organ-
izations, practices, knowledges and devices, which has a temporal duration to it
to ensure those future revenues happen and which is secured by techno-legal
limits on challenges or contestations of those initial claims. I am highlighting
all of this to emphasize that assetization can refer, like governance (Bevir,
2013), to both an analytical approach and an empirical phenomenon, as well
as a political project; that is, as a way to intervene in the highly contingent
20 Economy and Society

practices, claims and devices that constitute the transformation of things into
assets (Langley, 2021). Consequently, there is a growing need to examine asse-
tization as a mode of techno-economic governance for organizing our societies,
requiring, for example, more analyses of the implications underlying the
specific temporal coordination and organization of the economy (i.e. focused
on the future) (see Beckert, 2016; Tellmann, 2022); of the financial framing
of social actions and subjectivities, such as a focus on housing ownership
(Adkins et al., 2020; Birch, 2015) or human capital (Cooper, 2017; Feher,
2018); and of the normative limitations imposed on political and policy
decisions resulting from the dominance of investor logics and interests (Birch
& Muniesa, 2020; Dreyfuss & Frankel, 2015). A final call might be to think
about how we can step back from the asset condition to find ways to manage
our societal resources outside of the asset boundary; this would necessitate a
rethinking of what resources, assets and investments are and what they are for.

Acknowledgements

My thanks to the organizers and participants at the following events: Perspectives on the
Fourth Industrial Revolution Workshop, KAIST, South Korea (2017); European Associ-
ation for the Study of Science and Technology Conference and 6th Changing Political
Economy of Research and Innovation Workshop, both Lancaster, United Kingdom
(2018); Society for Social Studies of Science Conference, Sydney, Australia (2018); Tech-
noscientific Constitutionalism Joint DFG-NSF Workshop, Washington DC, United States
(2019); The Assetization of Work: Varieties of Human Capital Workshop, University of
Sydney, Australia (2019); Geography Seminar Series, University of Newcastle, Australia
(2019); Science and Technology Policy Webinar, University of Athens, Greece (2020); and
Department of Science & Technology Studies Seminar Series, University of Vienna,
Austria (2021). My thanks also to the guest editors (especially Veit Braun), reviewers,
journal editors and journal manager for their comments and suggestions. Usual disclai-
mers apply.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council
(SSHRC) of Canada under Grant [Ref. 435-2018-1136].

Notes

1 UN Statistics Division, https://unstats.un.org/UNSD/nationalaccount/sna.asp

2 UN Statistics Division, https://unstats.un.org/UNSD/nationalaccount/sna.asp
 Kean Birch: Assetization as a mode of techno-economic governance 21

3 This type of extension had happened before as SNA committees debated whether
one thing or another was best conceptualized as an asset or not. Haskel and Westlake
(2018, p. 43), for example, outline how SNA1993 had extended the asset boundary to
include spending on software, which was then subsequently enacted in the EU
(1995), United Kingdom (1998) and elsewhere.
4 A related, but tangential, issue here is the assetization of education through student
loans, although I do not have space to go into in this paper (see Milyaeva & Neyland,
2020).
5 See here: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/nationalaccount/update_Issues.asp
6 See here: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/nationalaccount/uProc.asp
7 See here: https://unstats.un.org/unsd/nationalaccount/aeg/2020/M14.asp

ORCID

Kean Birch http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2881-4623

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Kean Birch is Director of the Institute for Technoscience & Society and Professor in
the Graduate Program of Science & Technology Studies at York University, Canada.
He has a new book coming out with Palgrave Macmillan called Data enclaves.