Prof. Russell W. Belk is a Professor of Marketing; Kraft Foods Canada Chair in Marketing at Schulich School of Business, York University. Detailed profile can be found at here
Schulich School of Business, York University
December 19, 2023
Money, Psychological Possessions, and the Metaverse
Our understandings of money, possessions, and ownership are all changing dramatically as consumption becomes digital and virtual. The Metaverse is an imagined future space where these building blocks of neoliberal production and consumption are delinked. I examine these changes through the affordances of cryptocurrencies, algorithmic collectibles, and NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens). I seek to disambiguate these efforts at disintermediation through online auctions and speculation. I theorize new forms of ownership with fractional ownership and fractionalized property rights. I also propose the concept of psychological possession as a counterpart to psychological possession. I draw on conceptual art as an analogy for what is happening with NFTs and more generally in the consumption of digital goods. And I seek to understand why some consumers pay astronomical prices for digital art that includes simple and often silly artwork with limited property rights. To do so I distinguish alternate, but sometimes overlapping, buyer motivations in the world of crypto art as we purportedly move toward the Metaverse. Finally, we theorize a movement toward nothingness that is seen in conceptual art, NFTs, digitalization, dematerialization, and virtualization.
*Based on a Work in Progress with Rahul Sett, IIM Nagpur, India
