Mediated Ownership: Capital as Media

Summary

This article unravels opportunities that arise from regarding corporate capital as media. First, it reviews relevant overlaps between media theory and legal theory. Second, it considers cases in which capital ownership can be best understood as mediated, affective claims. Third, it explores how recognizing capital as media can open doors to constructive, creative entrepreneurship and activism – to the point of reinventing or undermining received practices of capital ownership altogether. When we think of capital ownership as mediation, we discover our institutional surroundings to be more vulnerable to critical research and more pliable to tactical intervention.