300650 The social life of global finance (MA: Soziologie der Globalen Welt) (S) (WiSe 2023/2024)

Despite impending financial crisis, finance has been taking an ever-greater role in the economic, social and political lives of global societies. Around the world, the logics and terms of financial markets and financial institutions increasingly shape the operations of governments, organisations, corporations, households and individuals in a process called financialization. The mystification and opacity around them notwithstanding, financial markets and institutions are made and run by human beings with specific values and agendas. Meanwhile, people around the world actively engage with financial structures, practices and logics to their own ends, thereby helping to configure in how financialization unfolds.

In this MA seminar, we will discuss anthropological and sociological texts on the social and political ramifications of financialization, the motivations of actors involved in the day-to-day workings of finance as well as financial activities by people and organisations in different global contexts. The aim is to equip students with understandings of how economic structures and logics are practised and materialise on the ground and how differentially positioned social actors participate in that process. (Studienleistung) assessment will be project based – you will work in pairs or in groups of three on a class project that critically examines the social and political implications of a specific financial institution, sector or product. If you wish to write a term paper for the class, you can do so along the same line. No prior knowledge is required, but the readiness to read a large amount of texts and contribute to class discussion every week is expected.