The latest copy of Journal of Cultural Economy (2012, vol. 5, no. 4) is a special issue on ‘Financial Subjects’, co-edited by Paul Langley (Durham) and Andrew Leyshon (Nottingham), and featuring work by a number of Charisma members. Comprised of eight original articles, available here, the special issue interrogates the often complex ways in which multiple financial subjects are summoned-up and assembled in the cultural and material production of an array of professional and popular financial markets. The contributors develop a range of perspectives as they consider, for instance: the making of annuity market consumers amidst processes of biofinancialization; the affective strategies of debt collectors which seek to reattach defaulted debtors to their outstanding obligations; the role of post-degree training and education in the gendering of investment bankers who athletically embrace the frontiers of risk; and the blurring of boundaries between work/play and finance/fun as the apparent rationalities of investment are experienced as thrill, pleasure and entertainment. Across the articles, moreover, the special issue stresses that the processes of identification in which financial subjects are produced and propelled are necessarily partial and problematic, always incomplete and on-going.
The contents of the issue are as follows:
– Fiona Allon & Guy Redden: The global financial crisis and the culture of continual growth
– Shaun French & James Kneale: Speculating on careless lives: Annuitising the biofinancial subject
– Donncha Marron: Producing over-indebtedness: Risk, prudence and consumer vulnerability
– Joyce Goggin: Regulating (virtual) subjects: Finance, entertainment and games
