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- Convenors:
-
Mathias Sosnowski Krabbe
(Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Marek Mikuš (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology)
Balazs Gosztonyi (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg)
Jitka Kralova (UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies)
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- Format:
- Panel
Short Abstract:
This panel explores the discourses of the financial industries and institutions, their less explored documents, such as bank statements, contracts, and other technical texts underpinning financial activities, and their representations in scholarship.
Long Abstract:
Besides operationalizing governmental bureaucratic structures (Hull 2012), documents, official paperwork and written law structure much of our contemporary economic life. In finance specifically, this includes credit reports, loan agreements, Basel Accords and many other kinds of documents. These texts are often hidden from the larger public and can both ratify and (re)produce societal stratifications.
They “unwrite” locally embedded notions of value, and their opaqueness makes them hard to contest. Cultural studies of finance have long pointed to the need to consider narratives and media representations of financial institutions and industries to critically engage with dominant paradigms of finance (Appadurai 2015; Holmes 2014; Leins 2018; Preda 2023). Yet more quotidian and technical financial documents have received less analytical attention (see e.g., Riles 2011), even though idioms describing distinct financial practices reflect the written modality (“writing off” or “underwriting” debts).
With the double-pronged focus on financial discourses and financial documents, the panel invites anthropologists, ethnologists, and scholars from neighbouring fields to address these and related questions: Who are the authors and audiences of financial discourses and documents? What do the latter enable financial and legal institutions to accomplish, and how do they reshape traditional customs and beliefs? How does digital technology and machine learning alter, update, and contradict the production of financial documents? And what should deconstructing academic writings be about in a case where scholars face subjects who are often more discursively powerful than themselves?
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper Short Abstract:
This paper investigates how corporate communication employees inside sustainable finance institutions employ writing practices to build institutional coherence and address some fundamental dilemmas of sustainable finance.
Paper Abstract:
Despite being known for their emphasis on responsible practices, sustainable finance institutions are vulnerable to a problem of institutional incoherence. To uphold their dual promise of profitability and positive environmental/social impact, these institutions need to find investments that are most profitable to their clients and most beneficial to the environment and society. This entails a challenging act of translating the incommensurable environmental and social goods into terms legible to the financial industry. At times, they are also faced with seemingly impossible choices, like choosing between the rights of indigenous communities and the mainstreaming of clean wind energy, or between deep ocean biodiversity and increasing the supply of critical transition minerals. Adding to the mix is a roster of employees, each passionate and unbudging in their own understanding of sustainability. All considered, these institutions become one of the main battlegrounds for building institutional coherence.
Enter the corporate communication employees of Fjord Future, a sustainable finance institution headquartered in Norway. Functioning as the in-house journalists and story-tellers, they strive to address institutional incoherence by writing narratives that paint their employer as a coherent and decent actor of sustainable finance. Based on ethnographic fieldwork entailing 12-month-long participant-observation as a ‘writer’ at this company, I show that Fjord Future's writing practices seek to address some fundamental dilemmas of sustainable finance and to create a coherent corporate persona. Yet, these efforts are almost always adorned with widespread intra-institutional tensions that render them ever-tentative in settling for good the problem of institutional incoherence.
Paper Short Abstract:
In this paper I show how the particular configuration of the communication strategies utilized by the Czech debt industry can lead to debtors’ confusion and disengagement. This in turn, particularly in the case of the property-owning class of debtors, enables the debt industry to capture and extract much larger profit via wage and property seizure. Simultaneously, I argue that debtors are not just passive victims to the system and actively decipher and contest those strategic tools, with the ultimate aim of 'unwriting' their debts.
Paper Abstract:
In this paper I want to explore the various forms of communication devices utilised by the debt collection industry and their effect in (de)attaching debtors from, and towards, their debt obligations. Drawing on existing scholarship (Davey and Koch 2021; Deville 2015; Rock 1973), I highlight the role of affect and emotions in those communication strategies and look at the ways in which these shape the debtors’ responses. Specifically, I critically examine the use of, what I call, the ‘legalistic language’ in the written communication sent by the legal representatives of creditors, collectors and enforcers legal representatives and examine its effects on debtors’ ability to take control over their financial obligations.
Drawing on the preliminary findings from my ethnographic research among defaulted debtors in a deindustrializing town in the Czech Republic, I argue that the particular configuration of the communication strategies utilized by the debt industry often results in debtors’ confusion and disengagement. This in turn, particularly in the case of the property-owning class of debtors, enables the debt industry to capture and extract much larger profit via wage and property seizure. Simultaneously, I argue that debtors are not just passive victims to the system and actively decipher and contest those debt indusry's strategic tools, with the ultimate aim of 'unwriting' their debts.
Paper Short Abstract:
Financial documents shape creditor-debtor relationships by acting as communicative devices, distributing both information and ignorance. This study, based on ethnographic fieldwork in Hungary, explores how debt collectors and bailiffs create incomplete and obfuscated documents, fostering information asymmetries and strategic ignorance to hinder debtors’ contestation and ability to reduce indebtedness.
Paper Abstract:
Creditor-debtor relationships are primarily financial situations grounded in contractual obligations and legal mechanisms shaped by particular legal and economic circumstances (Riles, 2011). Written contracts and other financial documents serve as the threads connecting finance and society, binding creditors and debtors (Weiss, 2020). Beyond their role as financial-legal artefacts, these documents act as communicative devices that shape the social and economic dynamics between debtors and creditors (Polletta and Tufail, 2014; Deville, 2015). This paper argues that financial documents not only distribute information but also propagate ignorance, influencing particular creditor-debtor relationships in over-indebtedness and default through shaping repayment conditions of specific contractual obligations. It highlights how inequalities in finance arise from the creation of financial documents, leading to information asymmetries (Leland and Pyle, 1977) and strategic ignorance (McGoey, 2012). Drawing on twelve months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2021/22 in Budapest and Northern Hungary, this study focuses on debt encounters in Hungary, including debt collection, enforcement, and debt advice. It reveals how various actors utilize information asymmetries to foster uncertainty and ignorance among debtors by creating and using incomplete and illegible financial documents. Through a detailed analysis of debt collection and enforcement documents—such as collection/enforcement records and acknowledgements of time-barred debt—the paper outlines common strategies employed by debt collectors and bailiffs. These tactics, including delay, omission, and concealment, generate information asymmetries and strategic ignorance to hinder debtors’ contestation and ability to reduce indebtedness.
Paper Short Abstract:
This study examines the role of credit advisors in shaping financial discourses about a specific, state-subsidised credit, the so-called Baby Expecting Loan, in Hungary. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Northern Hungary, by shadowing a credit expert, it shows how these financial intermediaries try to adjust the interpretation of the loan agreement to locally embedded notions of values - in this case, the pronatalist value of children in Roma families.
Paper Abstract:
This paper explores the phenomena and the consequences of the financialisation of social policy in illiberal Hungary through an ethnographic case study of (rural) households’s use of the (relatively) newly introduced financial product of the ’Baby Expecting Loan’. The research setting is the economically underdeveloped North East region of Hungary. The article deploys a multiscalar perspective to recognise how different actors of the studied everyday financialization of households are embedded in multiple networks across localities, regions and nation state. Building on recent anthropological theorization of household financialization by using the method of extended case study and of relational ethnography, I explore the role of different social actors involved in the use of the Baby Expecting loan, paying special attention to the figure of the financial intermediator/broker (the credit advisor). It examines the role of credit advisors in shaping financial discourses about this specific, state-subsidised credit. It shows how these financial intermediaries try to adjust the interpretation of the loan agreement to locally embedded notions of values - in this case, the pronatalist value of children in Roma families.
The paper benefits from ongoing ethnographic research with participant observation and by shadowing a credit advisor/broker in the past 6 months in a North Hungarian region. One of my main arguments is that financial intermediaries, unintentionally, push aspiring middle income Roma families into a very fragile, insecure and precarious state. However, their mass indebtedness has become a marker of social inclusion and of being ‘middle-class’.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper will investigate the epistemic modalities of automating trust in the Bitcoin blockchain. I will investigate dynamics of legibility/opacity and transparency/privacy that are operationalized through 'proof of work' systems as a form of writing technology that allows for software chatter to get crystallized into a model of recognition and reward. I will thus ethnographically explicate the idea of blockchain as a 'truth machine', which generates much hype and appeal around a decentralized accounting infrastructure emerging as a digital res publica.
Paper Abstract:
As a 'distributed trust protocol', the bitcoin blockchain seeks to integrate aspects of privacy, transparency and immutability by insisting on a time-stamped and encrypted register of all verified token property transfers. Through an ensuing dialectics between open-source verification and infrastructurally intensive machine-recognition, Blockchain emerges as a decentralized ledger technology where the appending of digital signatures itself becomes a model of money supply. In this paper, I will ethnographically re-assemble 'proof of work' in the blockchain as a form of communicative monetary proxemics, investigating the metaphors and object ontology underlying the data structures operationalizing the Bitcoin Blockchain. Utilizing Daniel Miller's material cultural perspective and Clifford Geertz's idea of cultural encryption and shadow-play, I will analyze modes of enregisterment in Satoshi Nakamoto's (2008) infamous Bitcoin white paper that operationalized a model of distributed accounting to become a source of peer-to-peer electronic cash. Further, I will argue how Bitcoin's model of mechanically fixed deflationary currency issuance is conceived through a computationally competitive digital potlatch with the site of the 'digital middens' of blockchain records itself becoming both a source of mechanical solidarity and an archaeological record of 'trust in the code'. Lastly, I will investigate how an epistemic modality of digital evidence performed through proof-of-work software communication itself allows for a currency ideal to emerge through transactional recognition in a self-appending accounting infrastructure. The paper seeks to de-anonymize the blockchain as a financial document which allows for a new Durkheimian mode of computational authority to emerge around the idea of immanent financial auditability.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper contributes to sociological perspectives on finance by illustrating how existing cultural discourse in financial markets serves as a kind of conservative critique where shortcomings are conceded in a way which insulates finance from wider structural change.
Paper Abstract:
Culture is increasingly articulated by financial actors and financial firms as a solution to the dislocations of contemporary capitalism. It therefore matters, not just how actors behave, but how they articulate culture and what importance they accord it. Drawing on pragmatist sociology, the present paper takes this injunction seriously and reports the findings of a field study involving 29 interviews with senior members of financial firms whose understanding of culture and its importance were interrogated directly. The discourse produced from these interviews simultaneously recognises current arrangements between finance and society as fractured and posits organisational culture initiatives as the most realistic means of repairing said arrangements. The paper draws on these findings to argue that despite masquerading as a call for change, Purposeful Culture discourse has the effect of protecting against calls to rethink or radically transform the role and effects of finance in society. The paper thus contributes to sociological perspectives on finance by illustrating how existing cultural discourse in financial markets serves as a kind of conservative critique where shortcomings are conceded in a way which insulates finance from wider structural change.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper explores the European Standardised Information Sheet (ESIS), a mortgage credit document, as a bureaucratic artefact that mediates relationships, enacts governance, and reflects neoliberal financialisation. It argues that despite its aims to empower borrowers and move beyond traditional “fine print” practices, the ESIS reveals tensions between transparency ideals and the specific temporalities and epistemologies of practice.
Paper Abstract:
This paper examines the European Standardised Information Sheet (ESIS), a mortgage credit document, as a bureaucratic artefact that mediates relationships, enacts governance, and embodies a neoliberal framework of financialisation. Mandated under Directive 2014/17/EU on credit agreements for consumers relating to residential property and implemented in Romania in 2016, the ESIS aims to standardise pre-contractual mortgage information, promoting transparency and comparability across offers.
The analysis, drawing on fieldwork in Bucharest between July 2019 and September 2020, explores three key dimensions of the ESIS. First, as a relational mediator, the document positions borrowers in a dual role: as informed decision-makers who consent to terms and as regulated subjects bound by the bank’s conditions. Despite the promise of informed decision-making, borrowers remain in an asymmetrical relationship with limited negotiating power. Second, as a governance tool, the ESIS embodies a regulatory risk-management approach, detailing interest rates, repayment schedules, and contingencies, while imposing clear accountability on borrowers. Third, as a sociopolitical artefact, the ESIS reflects a neoliberal paradigm where financial products are framed as individualized and depersonalised, obscuring the structural constraints shaping borrowers’ choices.
While the ESIS moves away from the traditional “fine print” approach of financial documents, striving to genuinely inform and empower borrowers, the paper argues that it nonetheless reveals a tension between ideals of transparency and temporalities and epistemologies specific to the logic of practice.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper explores how fintech advertising in London shapes retail investors' financial subjectivities. It examines the narratives of empowerment and inclusion in fintech, highlighting how these representations evoke desires and anxieties while reinforcing systemic inequalities under the guise of democratization.
Paper Abstract:
As London solidifies its role as a global fintech hub, home to over 1,600 fintech companies, the industry's rapid expansion is reshaping both the cityscape and public discourse. Fintech advertising, from Tube stations to company websites, promotes a vision of financial participation that invites individuals to invest emotionally and financially, framing retail investors as active agents in a democratized financial system.
This paper explores the affective and narrative dimensions of fintech representations, asking: What desires and anxieties do these advertising materials and corporate documents evoke? How do they reshape financial subjectivities, especially through the lens of “inclusion from below”? Based on ethnographic fieldwork and media analysis conducted in London’s fintech landscape (2022–2023), and using Shiller’s narrative economics framework, I examine how these materials simultaneously offer hope and reinforce systemic inequalities.
I argue that fintech narratives evoke a sense of agency amidst radical uncertainty. However, these discourses—rooted in the rhetoric of financial inclusion—often obscure the broader systemic changes needed for a more secure future. Drawing on Berlant’s concept of cruel optimism and Fisher’s critique of capitalist realism, I show how these narratives offer individualized solutions while perpetuating structural precarities. As the image of the finance industry shifts from traditional institutions like HSBC to fintech platforms, it is key to critically examine the discourses that fintech's promotional materials circulate, revealing how they aid existing power dynamics under the guise of democratization.
Paper Short Abstract:
Based on interviews, analysis of policy and educational materials, and participant observation of financial literacy practices, this paper examines the central role of various kinds of texts, narratives, and reading and writing practices in the financial literacy assemblage in Slovakia.
Paper Abstract:
Since the onset of its postsocialist transformation in 1989, Slovakia has evolved from a country with a limited and heavily regulated consumer finance to an increasingly financialized economy and society. Slovak households are the most indebted in Central and Eastern Europe, with mortgage loans being particularly central, and they also rely on partially privatized pension arrangements. More recently, discourses and practices of financial literacy and education have become increasingly prominent, framed by an apparent consensus between experts, policy makers and the financial industry that the financial literacy of Slovakia’s citizens is low, for which various national surveys and international comparative assessments are cited as evidence. The National Standard of Financial Literacy was adopted in 2014, laying foundations for the implementation of financial literacy as a mandatory component of primary and secondary education. State institutions such as the Ministry of Finance and the National Bank of Initiatives, various NGOs, and private financial actors are also involved in this field. Based on interviews, analysis of policy and educational materials, and participant observation in financial literacy classes and events in 2022–2023, this paper argues that financial literacy in Slovakia is a heterogeneous assemblage – simultaneously as a school subject, an ideological discourse, and a blend of practical advice and marketing that seeks to shape its subjects as rational, calculative, responsible and generally well-adjusted subjects of financialized capitalism. Particular attention is paid to the central role of various kinds of texts, narratives, and reading and writing practices in the financial literacy assemblage.
Paper Short Abstract:
This paper explores the increasingly successful efforts of Polish mortgagors with housing loan contracts indexed to the Swiss franc to, through legal means that relies on decrypting legal and financial texts, contest their financialized debt and engage with a much-debated legal system.
Paper Abstract:
Polish financial institutions point to a specific group of debtors‘ increasingly successful individual litigation efforts as the biggest threat to economic stability (NBP 2022). Based on courtroom ethnographic research among litigating mortgagors known colloquially as frankowicze, this paper explores their debt contestation efforts with the aid of for-profit law firms and their legal claims of infringed European consumer protection rights codified in the legal system. A system fraught with political tensions such as “legal Polexit” and “old” and “new” judges. Due to the system and mistrust of public discourse saturated with lobby campaigns from the banking sector, debtors have to carefully track the changing line of jurisprudence over the last half decade consisting of more than 100,000 legal cases to gauge the legal and by extension financial risks of filing a lawsuit. To contest this creditor-debtor relation, they have to critically engage with the underlying written contractual obligations vis-a-vis the banking and civil laws and the court rulings from (supra)national courts with little legal literacy and push for a new legal understanding among judges, lawyers, and lay people. In the process, developing a new legal understanding of consumer protection among judges, lawyers, and mortgagors. This paper contributes to the literature on the intersections between finance and law (Pistor 2019; Riles 2011), the role that written material artifacts play in contemporary capitalism (Stein 2017), and housing contestation (Florea et al. 2022) by arguing for the need to consider legality as a tool to “unwrite” financial debt.