The Stack Inversion
On Algo-Centrism and the Complex Architecture of Automated Financial Securities Trading Systems
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5337341 |
|---|---|
| Authors | K B Hansen (0000-0002-9536-6050, Copenhagen Business School, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 50 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 932-961 |
| Publication date | 2025-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Science Technology & Human Values (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0162-2439 • E-ISSN: 1552-8251 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1177/01622439241269983 |
| OpenAlex | W4401341360 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 98 |
In this article, I argue that devoting analytical attention to the natively technical concept of "the stack" can help re-sensitize studies of algorithms in Science and Technology Studies (STS) and adjacent fields to the depths of interdependence between different layers and elements of computational systems. Inspired by Bowker and Star's three-decades old methodological gestalt-switch concept of "infrastructural inversion," I propose a "stack inversion" that seeks to mitigate "algo-centrism"-an overemphasis on algorithms and algorithmic action-by shifting focus to the relational practices and material politics of "stacking." To demonstrate the analytical value of this stack inversion, I examine and discuss how software developers, data scientists, computer engineers, and other so-called "quants" working in the financial industry talk about and reflect on their own practices of devising and operating automated trading systems. The empirical material I analyze consists of 182 interviews conducted in the US and Europe with people occupying a range of different roles in financial securities trading and investment management. The article contributes to the burgeoning STS-informed literature on algorithms by proposing a conceptual-analytic move that allows for reflexive engagement with the material politics, opacities, and dependencies created in and around automated computational systems
Economics · Empirical research · Epistemology · Political science · Politics · Reflexivity · Social science · Sociology · Blockchain Technology Applications and Security · Computer Science · Ethics and Social Impacts of AI · FinTech, Crowdfunding, Digital Finance · Law · Architecture · Finance · Geology
Science on the run
Chains of Finance
Noise
Computing Taste
Statistical Modeling
Steps towards an ecology of infrastructure
The Relevance of Algorithms
The Black Box Society
The social power of algorithms
The algorithmic imaginary
Algorithms as regulatory objects
On studying algorithms ethnographically
The Stuff of Bits
Automating Finance
Sorting Things Out
Reassembling the Social
Infrastructuring and Participatory Design
Moore's Law versus Murphy's Law
Who, or what, is insurtech personalizing
Regimes of justification in the datafied workplace
Algorithms as complementary abstractions
Algorithms as figures
Seeing without knowing
Bodies not templates”
Untangling the Unwired
Infrastructural Inversion as a Generative Resource in Digital Scholarship
Groundwork for AI
Following the algorithm
Algorithmic psychometrics and the scalable subject
Systemic failures and organizational risk management in algorithmic trading
A material political economy
Close to the metal
Decoding algorithms
Folk theories of algorithms
Globalisation in practice
The Social Life of Robots
Understanding perception of algorithmic decisions
Layers of Silence, Arenas of Voice
Thinking critically about and researching algorithms
The Algorithms of Mindfulness
Seeing Like a State, Enacting Like an Algorithm
Developing the Vectorial Glance
The Digital Architecture of Time Management
Toward an Ethics of Algorithms
Who Gets to Choose? On the Socio-algorithmic Construction of Choice
Algorithms, Governance, and Governmentality
Governing Algorithms
Model Talk
The Trouble with Algorithmic Decisions
Stacked spaces
A not quite random walk
Algorithms as organizational figuration
Alternative data and sentiment analysis
Beyond opening up the black box
Algorithmic management in a work context
Toward a sociology of machine learning explainability
Algorithmic rationality
Algorithms as culture
Algorithms as folding
How the machine 'thinks
Algorithms and their others
High-frequency trader subjectivity
Platform capitalism and cloud infrastructure
Computer Algorithms, Market Manipulation and the Institutionalization of High Frequency Trading
The Society of Algorithms
Stack bricolage and infrastructural impermanence in financial machine-learning modelling
Drilling Through the Allegheny Mountains
The longest second
Expectations, competencies and domain knowledge in data- and machine-driven finance
Machine learning and social action in markets
Making', 'taking' and the material political economy of algorithmic trading
Organizational ignorance
Bugs, predations or manipulations? Incompatible epistemic regimes of high-frequency trading
What is an algorithm? Financial regulation in the era of high-frequency trading
Squaring the speed of light? Regulating market access in algorithmic finance
The ethnographer and the algorithm
Loops, ladders and links
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 3 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |