New Perspectives on Emotions in Finance by Pixley, Jocelyn;

Short description:

This interdisciplinary volume from a leading international group of scholars offers coherent sociological answers as to how and in what respects finance is ‘emotional’. Chapters offer sophisticated approaches to the current financial crisis, and the antecedents in cultural variations in institutions and organisational forms.

Long description:

The financial crisis that started in 2007 is a concern for the world. Some countries are in depression and governments are desperately trying to find solutions. In the absence of thorough debate on the emotions of money, bitter disputes, hatred and ‘moralizing’ can be misunderstood. New Perspectives on Emotions in Finance carefully considers emotions often left unacknowledged, in order to explain the socially useful versus de-civilising, destructive, nature of money. This book offers an understanding of money that includes the possible civilising sentiments.

This interdisciplinary volume examines what is seemingly an uncontrollable, fragile world of finance and explains the ‘panics’ of traders and ‘immoral panics’ in banking, ‘confidence’ of government and commercial decision makers, ‘shame’ or ‘cynicism’ of investors and asymmetries of ‘impersonal trust’ between finance corporations and their many publics. Money is shown to rely on this abstract trust or ‘faith’, but such motivations are in crisis with ‘angry’ conflicts over the ‘power of disposition’. Restraining influences – on ‘uncivilised emotions’ and rule breaking – need democratic consensus, due to enduring national differences in economic ‘sentiments’ even in ostensibly similar countries. Promising ideas for global reform are assessed from these cautionary interpretations.

Instead of one ‘correct’ vision, sociologists in this book argue that corporations and global dependencies are driven by fears and normless sentiments which foster betrayal. This book is not about individuals, but habitus and market crudities. Human ‘nature’ or ‘greed’ cannot describe banks, which do not ‘feel’ because their motivations are not from personal psyches but organisational pressures, and are liable to switch under money’s inevitable uncertainties. This more inclusive social science studies emotions as a crucial factor among others, to expand the informed public debate among policy makers, bankers, academics, students and the public.

Table of Contents:

Foreword by ESA Series Editors Helena Flam and Helmut Kuzmics

Editor Introduction Jocelyn Pixley

Part I: Emotions and the Present Crisis: Reshaping the sociology of finance　

1. Magic Thinking and Panic Buttons in the Callous Financial Transaction Chains Helena Flam

2. Immoral Panic and Emotional Operations in Times of Financial Fragility Alexandros-Andreas Kyrtsis

3. How European Sovereign Debt Became the New Subprime: On the role of confidence in the European financial crisis (2009-2010) Richard Swedberg

4. Shame and Stock Market Losses: The case of amateur investors in the US Brooke Harrington

5. The Grammar of Trust Susan Shapiro

Part II: The Financial Crisis in Context: Historical and theoretical investigations

6. Revisiting the Credit Theory of Money and Trust Geoffrey Ingham

7. Methodology in Max Weber’s Economic Sociology: What place emotions in Roman agrarian history or today’s finance sector? Sam Whimster

8. States of Disorder: New reflections on sociology’s contribution to understanding financial booms and crises Shaun Wilson and Peter McCarthy

9. ‘Nicotine for Protein’: Culture and the emotions of hard trading in Japanese prisoner of war camps Benjamin Manning

10. Betrayal and Reform: From new approaches to the emotions of money Jocelyn Pixley