In recent decades, the UK government has been promoting private asset ownership while reducing publicly funded welfare programmes. This asset-based welfare approach calls on households to accumulate assets for the purpose of providing financial security during periods of income shortfall. Informed by Foucault's concept of governmentality and drawing on semi-structured interviews, I explore how norms of asset ownership are constructed and embedded in everyday life. The empirical insights presented here reveal a twofold contribution to the literature. First, looking to debates within the financialization of everyday life literature, I demonstrate that UK households conform to asset norms despite being critical of them. Households develop a three-pronged asset accumulation strategy consisting of homeownership, savings, and pension investments. Second, I shed light on the interplay between norms of asset ownership and work relationships. To be able to save and invest, interviewed households increase work hours, choose a job solely based on income and make sure to work hard. Asset norms thus reinforce existing power relationships incorporated in capital-labour inequalities.

The term financialization occupies a centre-stage in non-mainstream approaches to economics. Existing research in heterodox economics sees changes in modern finance as a key aspect of the transformation of contemporary capitalism. However, there is considerable diversity in the way financialization is approached, studied, and analyzed in heterodox discussions, implying a range of different analytical frameworks, methodological assumptions, research questions, and strategies. The chapter presents and discusses the main strands of heterodox literature with regard to contemporary finance and overviews alternative research agendas. While the majority of heterodox economic approaches conceptualize financialization as dysfunctional to capitalist society, an emerging research agenda investigates the transformation of class relations and social conflicts that are related to financialization.

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