Beyond sectors, before the world: Finance, security and risk

While security and finance are certainly different social spheres, the fact that we can detect similar shifts in both points to the existence of something that precedes these 'realities'. If finance and security are said to be different, intertwined and related, the question then arises as to what it is that constitutes the differences and similarities between them. This article argues that further inquiry into the boundary between the two leads us to understand processes of securitization and financialization as constitutive processes by which actors, behaviours, practices or communications are considered to be economic or securitized. To capture processes of financialization, the article draws on systems theory in general and the concept of functional differentiation in particular.