Financial Risk-taking as a Sociological Gamble

Notes on the Development of a New Social Perspective

Bibliographic Data

ID8046089
AuthorsGalit Ailon (0000-0002-4595-5439, Bar-Ilan University, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume48
Issue3
Pages606-621
Publication date2013-09-26
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0038-0385 • E-ISSN: 1469-8684
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0038038513500109
OpenAlexW2039157584
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited76

This article attempts to bring into focus a sociological aspect of financialization that has evaded theoretical attention. Integrating the findings of a growing body of literature on the sociology of finance, it assembles evidence that financial markets entail a particular awareness of, and perspective on, the social. This perspective is characterized by three attributes: a ‘reflexive social distancing’ whereby financial actors observe social processes in the market in a socially attentive but self-detached way and through which they recognize financial market prices as socially constituted; a ‘social forgetting’ inherent in stochastic configurations and engagement with financial chance; and ‘social dissociation’ with regard to the outcomes and implications of financial decisions. Taken as a whole, these elements constitute ‘financial risk-taking’ as a type of ‘sociological gamble’. The article discusses the importance of studying the social perspective inherent in financialization as a means of furthering our understanding of its character and implications

Financialization · Reflexivity · Sociological imagination · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Political and Economic history of UK and US · Political Economy and Marxism

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