104 research outputs found
Reproducing the City of London’s institutional landscape: the role of education and the learning of situated practices by early career elites
In this paper we argue that postgraduate education forms an important, but hitherto neglected, element in the distinctive institutional landscape of the City of London.
In particular, and drawing on research into early-career financial and legal elites in the City, we show how postgraduate education tailored to the demands of employers within London plays an important role in indoctrinating early-career elites into situated, Cityspecific,
working practices and, in so doing, helps to sustain the City’s cultures and norms of financial practice. Specifying the role of postgraduate education in reproducing these
situated City practices is significant because, although geographical variegation in working practices between international financial centres has been widely reported, less attention has been paid to how such institutionally embedded differences are created and sustained. By identifying education as one mechanism of creation and sustenance, our analysis enhances understanding of how the institutional landscapes that underlie financial centres might be maintained or, when necessary, challenged; challenge being significant in relation to attempts to reform practices and cultures in international financial centres in the wake of the 2007–08 crisis
Tilly's Technical Accounts and Standard Stories Explored in Financial Markets:The Case of the Istanbul Stock Exchange
In this article, I follow the lead opened up by Tilly (1999, 2002) who was interested in people's storytelling. I do so by looking at sense-making and the legitimacy narratives of market actors in the Istanbul Stock Exchange. Tilly (2006, 2008) himself walked the narrative path and investigated Why and how people give reasons and how people attribute Credit and Blame to other's actions. These books provide insights into people's storytelling in the everyday situations of the home, courtrooms, hospitals, and so on. Nevertheless, Tilly's faith in the prevalence of technical accounts as modes of explanation in intra and inter organisational settings, and superior stories as mode of communication between expert givers and non-specialized receivers, seems to ignore informational uncertainties, intra and inter organisational hierarchies and conflicts pertinent to organisations. It is these factors that push standard stories (Tilly, 1999) into the forefront at the expense of technical stories within the story exchanges of market actors. I demonstrate this by presenting a sample of story exchanges from the Istanbul Stock Exchange under situations of informational uncertainties and organisational conflicts
Constructing a New Asset Class: Property-led Financial Accumulation after the Crisis
This paper is concerned with new modes of property-led financial
accumulation emerging in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Focusing on the US,
the paper traces the creation of an asset class derived from securitizing the rental
income of foreclosed homes turned rental properties. The study strategically
combines conceptual agendas often pursued separately. Theories of market formation
rooted in science and technology studies inform the method of analysis, so as to
attend to the work of realizing markets, the role of calculative devices in market
formation, and the contingent and conditional aspects of markets. This analysis
reveals the single-family rental (SFR) asset class as a practical accomplishment.
However, a broader framework rooted in political economy is necessary to attend to
the broader significance of the SFR asset class in terms of power, politics, and the
dynamics of capital accumulation. The paper particularly focuses upon the historical
and geographic contingencies making it possible to conceive of a large-scale SFR
market, the work of state and capital market actors in reframing repossessed singlefamily
homes as rental properties and the role calculative practices played in this
process, and the strategies of issuers and credit rating agencies to frame a novel asset
class for institutional investors. The SFR asset class affirms the fundamental role for
housing in the ideology of capital, and speaks to new entanglements of financial
actors and home life as financial accumulation is adjusted to the post-crisis context.
Beyond shedding light on post-crisis housing financialization, the paper demonstrates
how economic geographers can carefully integrate theoretical perspectives to
critically examine both the circumstances of market formation and the social, spatial,
and political consequences of markets
The anthropology of money and finance : between ethnography and world history
We review here recent developments in the anthropology of money and finance, listing its
achievements, shortcomings and prospects, while referring back to the discipline‘s founders a
century ago. We take our departure from the work of Marcel Mauss and Karl Polanyi, both of
whom combined openness to ethnographic research with a vision of world history as a whole.
Since the 1960s, anthropologists have tended to restrict themselves to niche fields and
marginal debates. From the 1980s the anthropological study of money and ethnographies of
finance especially have taken off. Despite taking on new objects and directions,
anthropologists still find it difficult to connect their situated analyses with global processes
and world history. We propose some conceptual and empirical directions for research that
would seek to overcome these limitations by integrating ethnography more closely with
human history, while stressing the importance of money in shaping world society and in
attempts to reform it.http://www.annualreviews.org/hb201
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