| Popis: |
The aim of this book is to inquire into the relationship between human beings and financial markets. In this inquiry the author wishes to emphasize two aspects. Firstly, the act of creation of scientific knowledge, and secondly, the ubiquitous relationship that seems to interweave our everyday lives with financial markets. These two aspects highlight the main conversations to which this book wants to contribute. These are interpretative and hermeneutic research within social science in general and business administration in particular, as well as the growing literature on financialization. The more precise problem discussed concerns the insecurity and uncertainty that seem to surround our relationship with financial markets, or, as put in the literature: “the uncertain subjects of financialization”. Inspired by the ethnographic tradition, the author observed a gathering of thousands of people under the topic of making money from money in a spectacular building. The experience of this event worked as a catalyst for an interpretation of not only the specific meeting but also of our relationship to financial markets more generally. With the help of an elaborated analogy, it is suggested that we live (within) a spirit of finance capitalism, a spirit that has an ever-increasing presence in our lives. The author argues that our relationship to financial markets – and the financialization of daily life – is an existential dilemma as much as a financial one. Differently put, we can read the widespread uncertainty surrounding financial markets as doubt about the existence that we – more or less, for better or worse – appear unable to escape in a capitalistic society where finance is omnipresent. The interpretation contributes to the literature on financialization in two distinct ways. First, it integrates several themes recognized in the literature – such as opportunity, power, education and community – under one umbrella. Second, it accomplishes this by drawing on the tradition of sociology of religion and thereby highlighting the existential aspect of finance as an essential part of the human condition in a capitalist society. |
