Vapour capital

The list is heterogeneous on purpose, since equity, options, intellectual property, rights and social capital have nothing in common as things and everything in common as holdings. None is a physical possession and each confers a claim, which is what vapour names. The second half of the list is the sharper part, because social capital as a product of class covers position, education, citizenship and connections, and those are not usually counted as capital at all. Counting them makes visible that a passport and a degree function as holdings in the same way equity does, conferring access without corresponding to anything material. Class in Marsh's glossary is a social construct resulting from classification relative to the endo-ideal, so vapour capital is what that classification pays out. The companion term is vapour wealth, conceptual financial wealth not tied to any physical property, and the pair together describe an economy in which the most consequential holdings are claims rather than things. The practical implication runs through her account of the approval economy. If these holdings are conferred rather than material, they depend on recognition, and recognition can be withdrawn, which is why she treats even powerful states as susceptible to the world's approval and points to the effect of sanctions. What looks like the most secure form of wealth is the most dependent on a consensus continuing to hold.

Pierre Bourdieu's forms of capital, economic, cultural, social and symbolic, is the direct precursor and covers most of what Marsh lists, arguing that non-economic holdings convert into economic advantage. Intangible assets are a recognized accounting category and now dominate the market value of large firms. Citizenship as inherited property is the argument of Ayelet Shachar's birthright lottery. Marsh's contribution is the grouping and the name, since vapour captures the shared property Bourdieu's typology separates, that none of these holdings corresponds to anything material and all depend on continued recognition.