Establishing a Disciplining Financial Disposition in the City of London: Resilience, Speed and Intelligence

Abstract

Examining the strategies, investments and values employed by finance workers in the City of London, this article draws on interview and ethnographic data to develop a culturally dominant ‘financial disposition’. Manifesting as an overarching strategy of discipline, and identifying the interlocking performative values of resilience, speed and intelligence, the findings articulate how finance workers invest in a system of practical and cognitive social relations to uphold an ideologically coherent system of ‘frictionless’ financial exchange. In doing so, the article allows us to see how an ideologically dominant market order, which is overwhelmingly subject to structural levels of analysis, establishes a set of durable yet adaptable social relations that contribute to the production of a coherent market system. It is a development that gives new meaning to the ways individuals adapt and contribute to the reproduction of material and structural relations and come to characterise the financial experience.

Better Than the Markets: Mutual Fund Managers’ Perceptions of the Rich

“…Despite financial markets being global in nature, research on them has surprisingly often concentrated on so-called financial centres. We know relatively well how financial intermediaries on Wall Street (Ho, 2009) or in London City (Hecht, 2022; Simpson, 2019) work and think, but very little of how ‘ordinary professionals’ make sense of their surroundings. Rather than focusing on the alpha-professionals of the financial centres, this article describes how the non-elite financial professionals in Finland perceive the tendency of the financial markets to accumulate wealth.…”

“…Consequently, this article aims at a better understanding of the 'cultural ethos that sustains a dominant financial order', a task set for research, for example, by Simpson (2019Simpson ( : 1063. Simpson (2019Simpson ( : 1063 argues that the recent focus on financial crises in cultural financial studies has overlooked 'the everyday cultural practices and rule systems, enacted by individuals and groups'.…”

“…Consequently, this article aims at a better understanding of the 'cultural ethos that sustains a dominant financial order', a task set for research, for example, by Simpson (2019Simpson ( : 1063. Simpson (2019Simpson ( : 1063 argues that the recent focus on financial crises in cultural financial studies has overlooked 'the everyday cultural practices and rule systems, enacted by individuals and groups'. Instead of focusing on crises, the field should 'begin to establish a lens of analysis that foregrounds models of practice, socialisation and dimensions of power in the cultural reproduction of financial markets' (Simpson, 2019(Simpson, : 1063.…”

“…Simpson (2019Simpson ( : 1063 argues that the recent focus on financial crises in cultural financial studies has overlooked 'the everyday cultural practices and rule systems, enacted by individuals and groups'. Instead of focusing on crises, the field should 'begin to establish a lens of analysis that foregrounds models of practice, socialisation and dimensions of power in the cultural reproduction of financial markets' (Simpson, 2019(Simpson, : 1063. Thus, the approach to financial markets used in this article is interested in the structures of thought that support or reproduce certain social formations: in the case of this article, that of increasing wealth accumulation at the top.…”

A relational approach to the ethnographic study of power in the context of the city of London

“…This is to trace the unity between the minds, bodies and technological processes that flow through the financial markets and examine how, in the manner of Bourdieu (1996), individuals mark themselves as different and ennobled. By upholding the integrity of the ideological market system through their shared actions and beliefs, individuals engage in mutually recognised performative modes characterised by speed, sharpness and collective honour (Simpson, 2018(Simpson, , 2019. These are reflexive processes of body and mind that facilitate movement through an increasingly accelerated financial landscape, through which finance workers equip themselves for the competitive and technologically accelerated rigours of market life.…”