Finance is sourced from everyday life, not just reaching down from elites

Evidence

But this book is not simply a story about finance overstepping its bounds. Such an approach would make two key mistakes. The first would be to assume that finance has some set of normative bounds to which it ought to be confined, a position which I find historically and politically untenable. Throughout the history of capitalism, finance might be said to have always had “too much” influence, and it is my opinion that finance as we know it, along with capitalism, must be abolished in order to overcome this poisonous influence. Second, assuming that the problem with finance is simply its creep into areas of social practice where it should fear to tread denies the way that finance is, in part, driven both by constant expansion and by actions and agents in the field of everyday life. We cannot afford to imagine the financial sector as only some parasitical leech, “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money,” as the journalist Matt Taibbi (2010, 209) memorably described investment bank Goldman Sachs. Rather, in order to both arrive at a clearer understanding of financialization and also chart a course of struggle that might see us beyond it, we must try to conceptualize it as, at least in part, a “bottom-up” process whereby speculative capitalist social relations are sown in the soil of daily life and social practice and later harvested in ways that do not simply reduce themselves to the conniving villainy of the ruling class, the “1%” or any other singular human agency. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 57

Categorization

• XREF: Ties to deWaard: rejecting the ‘vampire squid / 1% villain’ frame in favor of bottom-up bricolage of daily life is the cultural argument’s foundation. — connects to: Financialization is reproduced from everyday life, not imposed by an autonomous elite — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 129; Financialization means finance’s logics penetrate the fabric of everyday life — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 72; Citizens and governments alike borrowed heavily, embedding finance in everyday life. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 150 (+3 more)
• DEEPTHINKING: The ‘bottom-up’ thesis — speculative social relations sown in daily life and harvested later, irreducible to singular villainy — is the book’s paradigm-shifting core claim about agency and culture.
• SHARE: For an economist friend who frames financialization purely as top-down predation: Haiven’s historical claim that finance has ‘always had too much influence’ under capitalism reframes the whole moral of the story.

Broader Connections

• Financialization is reproduced from everyday life, not imposed by an autonomous elite #corroborates (0.97) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 129
• Financialization operates as decentralized power through everyday financial practices #expands (0.85) — Natascha van der Zwan, Making Sense of Financialization, 20
• Financialization means finance’s logics penetrate the fabric of everyday life #expands (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 72
• Citizens and governments alike borrowed heavily, embedding finance in everyday life. #exemplifies (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 150
• Financial metaphors and modes have crept into everyday North American culture #exemplifies (0.80) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 91
• Finance’s social dominance rests on popular speculative imagination, not mere value subordination #expands (0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 356