Co-Opting Revolution in the Post-Revolutionary Age - Revolution as Embedded Counter-Culture in Swedish Finance

Abstract

From the 1980s and onwards, markets have been prime movers in an individualist, market-liberal transformation, and now take part in the every-day life of the general public. Similar to economic development, also personal identity has become fuelled by consumption. Production and work turn more peripheral vis-à-vis the self-project. Instead of the process of production, objects of consumption, in which to express one’s individuality become situated at the centre of business-life. Consumers with values of expressive individualism view seemingly non-conformist products as attractive. Swedish finance is here analysed as a formerly conservative sector of business that because of an increasingly focus on speed opens up to notions of counter-culture and even revolution.brokerage firms; co-optation; counter-cultures; ethical consumption; revolution