‘Locked in the Rat Race’: Variegated financial subjectivities in the United Kingdom

Abstract

In the past four decades, the UK welfare state has been continuously reduced while asset ownership has gained in importance. Rather than relying on publicly funded welfare when not working, individuals are expected to mitigate future risks such as ill health, unemployment or old-age poverty through accumulating assets. Previous research employing a Foucauldian governmentality framework has explored how these norms of asset accumulation come into being through institutional changes and discourses. Documenting the narratives and practices of 60 UK individuals and bringing in an understanding of resistance being immanent in power technologies, the author sets out two key contributions to the everyday financialisation literature. First, this paper is the first study to conceptualise differential financial discourses and practices as distinct subject positions within the realms of financialisation. Due to feeling ‘trapped’ in having to provide financial security themselves, governable subjects amend asset norms to their own needs. Five subject positions emerged from the complex interplay between norms of conduct and counter-conduct. Second, these variegated financial subjectivities and practices are, it is argued, not only deviating from a theorised investor subject but are also necessary for everyday financialisation to take place. Counter-conduct helps to smoothen ambiguities inherent in norms of conduct, enabling asset accumulation and reinforcing a welfare system based on individual responsibility.

The gendered construction of risk in asset accumulation for retirement

“…First, the findings presented suggest that gender is a key dynamic of variegated financial subjectivities (Lai 2017, Pellandini-Simanyi and Banai 2021, Agunsoye 2021. While male respondents tended to employ some of the rationale of the everyday investor, who perceives risk as positive and generative of income and employs individualistic ways to achieve maximum returns, female respondents were more likely to distance themselves from the financialised subjectivity of the everyday investor.…”

“…Through these financial products, 'investor-subjects' (Langley 2006, p. 925) are expected to accumulate assets to provide for their later life, adopting financial strategies to manage the relationship between risk and reward for their assets, such as portfolio diversification. Yet, research has shown that individuals do not blindly follow these rationales: instead, financial rationales become enmeshed with everyday rationalities, resulting in variegated financial subject positions (Lai 2016, Pellandini-Simanyi and Banai 2021, Agunsoye 2021. Even those whose behaviour most closely resembles the theorised investor subject display a reluctance to adopt the underlying rationale associated with it, maintaining a critical lens towards financial institutions (Agunsoye 2021).…”

“…Yet, research has shown that individuals do not blindly follow these rationales: instead, financial rationales become enmeshed with everyday rationalities, resulting in variegated financial subject positions (Lai 2016, Pellandini-Simanyi and Banai 2021, Agunsoye 2021. Even those whose behaviour most closely resembles the theorised investor subject display a reluctance to adopt the underlying rationale associated with it, maintaining a critical lens towards financial institutions (Agunsoye 2021). This section accordingly examines what we know about the extent to which people engage with workplace pensions and other forms of personal investments to provide for later life.…”

“…We build on these key findings from feminist political economy to examine everyday financialisation from a gender perspective. Literature on everyday financialisation portrays it as a variable and contested process, in particular through the theorisation of variegated financial subjectivities, meaning the way that logics and practices of finance are entwined with other everyday rationalities (Lai 2016, Pellandini-Simányi and Banai 2021, Agunsoye 2021). However, this body work rarely takes account of gender as an important dynamic of lived experience, foregrounding the need to better understand how gender shapes the ways in which individuals respond to and interact with financialised systems (Roberts 2015, Fine 2017, Best et al 2021.…”

‘I had to take control’: gendered finance rationality in the UK

“…To address this gap, we turn to research on everyday financialization, which challenges the monolithic theorization of the financial subject (Agunsoye, 2021;Lai, 2017;Pellandini-Simanyi & Banai, 2020). Through predominantly qualitative research, studies in this field have revealed the ways in which logics of finance become intertwined with everyday rationalities.…”