Embryonic financialization: the privatization of Military Dependents’ Villages in Taiwan

Much of the scholarly attention to financialization remains focused on the period surrounding the Global Financial Crisis. This paper examines embryonic financialization and the state’s role in shaping it through the privatization of Military Dependents’ Villages (MDVs), tracing how financial mechanisms were incorporated into housing governance to illuminate the variegation of financialization. These settlements for post-war Chinese immigrants underwent demolition, relocation, reconstruction, and privatization from the late 1970s. Drawing on secondary documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews, and spatial mapping, the study shows how political imperatives, institutional constraints, and publicly steered financial channels converged to convert state-owned housing and land into privatized assets. The state acted as the architect, deploying financial instruments to scale up privatization and secure implementation funds. Embedded mechanisms and calculative decision-making tied MDV households to debt and shaped urban socio-spatial development. Historicizing MDVs advances understanding of the local practices of financialization, reveals how state roles vary across historical and institutional contexts, and highlights the temporal dimensions of financialization.