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Preface
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ix Preface The“NewYorkStockandExchangeBoard”receiveditsconstitutionin 1820;sincewhichtimeithasbecomethesceneofthemoststupendous gamblingoperations,uncheckedbypublicopinion,andunbridledbylegislative restrictions....Stock-gambling...isunblushinglypractisedby “gentlemen”in“thebestsociety.” ,1846 This book discusses how modern finance has acquired the reputation of economic necessity and scientific respectability when less than two centuries ago it stood condemned as irreputable gambling and fraud. The UnitedStatesMagazineandDemocraticReview argued that trading in stocks and credit certificates “has opened a road to the possession of great means . . . far shorter and more agreeable to the successful than the old beaten and irksome track of perseverance and industry. It is a means greatly to be deprecated. It is subject to all the chances of a game of hazard, when conducted in good faith, and susceptible of endless varieties of fraud under the guidance of persons destitute of principle” (1846, 83). Instead of being created through gambling and chance, the Democratic Review concluded, “all the wealth of a nation must necessarily consist of the proceeds of the industry of its inhabitants” (83). This condemnation of stock trading practices stands in sharp contrast with the image of finance at the turn of the twenty-first x · preface century, when financial expertise and specialist literature have proliferated and when it has become a moral imperative notto let one’s money “sit idle,” for instance, in a savings account, but to look for the highest investment returns. Financial speculation as a means of income has acquired popular legitimacy, and financial theory has acquired scientific respectability. To be sure, episodes of perceived crisis and scandal in the financial markets can still lead to critique and condemnation, as has occurred since the end of the so-called dot-com boom of the 1990s. However, the fundamental morality of investment practice, the science of financial theory, and the respectability of the financial profession are now rarely questioned. Contemporary financial critiques concern mainly the excesses of crisis, which simultaneously depoliticizes a presupposed domain of “normal” finance. In this book, I aim to disturb the depoliticized nature of finance theory and practice through a genealogical reading of the historical struggles, debates, controversies, insecurities, and ambiguities that had to be purged from nascent credit practices in order to produce the image of today’s coherent and—largely— rational global financial sphere. I discuss some of the moral, religious , and political transformations that have slowly constructed the domain of finance as a legitimate, rational, and, above all, natural practice. These transformations concern the way in which the virtue of financial practice was articulated in contrast to gendered representations of fortune, and the faith that underpins the imagination of finance as a science. These moral and political transformations should not be seen as secondary to or separate from the emergence of material financial networks, but are at the heart of the ways in which the institutions of modern finance have taken shape. These debates have determined the legal, political, and moral spaces in which modern finance operates . Moreover, the conceptual and moral struggles and debates documented here were not historical aberrations or temporary hurdles on the path to modern finance, but remain unresolved and politically relevant today. This project has traveled a long way since its first insecure steps at the Research Centre for International Political Economy (RECIPE) at the University of Amsterdam in 1997. I am grateful, first of all, to the funding bodies that have made it possible. These were in 1997–98, the Netherlands-America Commission for Educational [3.12.36.147] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 06:04 GMT) preface · xi Exchange (NACEE), the Netherlands-America Foundation (NAF), and the New School Vera List Foundation; in 1998–99, the Prins Bernhard Fonds, the Stichting Doctor Catharine van Tussenbroek Fonds, and the Fundatie van de Vrijvrouwe van Renswoude; in 1999–2001, the British Council Chevening Scholarship Programme; and in 2001–2, the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) Postdoctoral Fellowship program. Thanks also to the British International Studies Association (BISA) and the International Federation of University Women (IFUW) in Geneva for their travel grants. Many thanks to my editors at the University of Minnesota Press, Mike Shapiro and Carrie Mullen. For the use of the images in this book, many thanks to Eric and Liz Davis and to Chris Mullen of the University of Brighton School of Design. Special thanks to J. S...
