Financialization Of Daily Life
Financialization Of Daily Life
Randy Martin
Series: Labor in Crisis
Copyright Date: 2002
Published by: Temple University Press
Pages: 240
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt14bsxq4
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Book Info
Financialization Of Daily Life
Book Description:

While trillions of dollars came and went in the stock market boom of the 1990s, the image of "every man and woman a CEO" may turn out to be the era's lasting legacy. Business news, once reserved to specialized papers or sections of the larger news of the day, came to the forefront in cable television and in cultural images of how ordinary people, through the internet and other avenues could not only master their financial life, but move money and equity around with the ease of a financial titan. Financialization of Daily Life looks at how this transformation occurred, and how it is just now becoming a significant, and troubling, aspect of our political and cultural life.Randy Martin takes us through all of the aspects of our "financialization." He examines how the shift in economic life arose not only from changes in culture, but also from new policy priorities that emphasize controlling inflation over promoting growth. He offers a close reading of self-help literature that teaches parents how to rear financially literate children and to instruct adults in the fundamentals of fiscal management. He examines just what a society that treats financial investment as a national past time really looks like, and how that society is transforming the world.In a country rocked by scandals in accounting and banking, the identification ordinary citizens make with, and the risk with which they engage in, the stock market calls into question the very basis of our economic system. Randy Martin spells out in clear terms the implications our financial doings—and undoing—have for the way we organize our lives, and, especially, our money.

eISBN: 978-1-4399-0597-5
Subjects: Sociology
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Table of Contents
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  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-iv)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. v-vi)
  3. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. vii-x)
  4. Introduction: What in the World Is Financialization?
    Introduction: What in the World Is Financialization? (pp. 1-12)

    “Suddenly, finance is fun.” This from a full-page ad for WingspanBank.com, another of the myriad Internet startups bent on sparing no effort to convince the reader to embrace a “new way” in financial services.¹ The visual in the ad is of two naked infants, one black, one white, gazing upon a computer screen emblazoned with the Wingspan logo. Though we cannot see their facial expressions, we come to the image of the future through their innocent attentions. The arm of the black child rests snugly upon the shoulder of a white companion whose tuft of hair suggests infant femininity precociously...

  5. 1 Too Much of a Good Thing?
    1 Too Much of a Good Thing? (pp. 13-54)

    The world is awash in money. Thirty trillion dollars changes hands in a month. Well, actually, hands rarely get into the picture. Most money is transferred from account to account electronically. Wealth can ricochet around the globe like a bullet, but never sear the flesh. While many are untouched, few are unaffected. The United States broke its own records for economic growth during the 1990s. The same could not be said for the rest of the world, where poverty and development remained for many an internecine conflict.¹ The expansion in the United States was initially unable to deliver much more...

  6. 2 When Finance Becomes You
    2 When Finance Becomes You (pp. 55-102)

    When does financialization begin? Many offer advice. Just as the good Dr. Spock taught the science of child rearing, so today households must be instructed on the proper approach to making kids financially literate. When scientific management was brought into the home, financial matters were a parental affair. Children would be protected from the marketʹs madness, and money was to be kept off the dinner table. Secreted from moneyʹs corrupting influence, the home could be a haven, and children could live in blissful innocence of their full dependence until, with adulthood, they were shown the door. For the avatars of...

  7. 3 Risking the World
    3 Risking the World (pp. 103-148)

    Finance offers a word to the wise and foolish alike: Risk. Those averse to it should seek professional help. Those willing to cuddle in its embrace can power themselves. Those who have drunk too much at the well should seek a higher power. All this advice is available free of charge with fees collected later on. The suffusion of the world with risk appears unavoidable. While financial risk has the potential of loss, it is a recipe for reward. It is an ad for venture. But finance does not monopolize the meanings of risk, and that fact only makes the...

  8. 4 The New Divisions: A Geography Reconfigured
    4 The New Divisions: A Geography Reconfigured (pp. 149-198)

    ʺThereʹs no place like home,ʺ coos Dorothy. This she knows after a tour through exotic lands, where an inscrutable wizard must be unmasked and his powers profaned before normality can be returned. Financialization too has its Oz, which is to be conquered by faith in more righteous principles than had previously ruled. Dot.com millionaires made exciting poster children for the speculative bubble, but for risk management to settle in as a way of life, the abject would need to join the ebullient to give the cautionary tale its power to set things right. The tale itself looks very different depending...

  9. Notes
    Notes (pp. 199-216)
  10. Index
    Index (pp. 217-230)