Financialization redraws who supplies life’s basic needs, shifting welfare from state to markets

Evidence

Scholars of the everyday have abandoned the exclusive focus on the global in favour of an approach that appreciates the diverse ways in which finance is grounded in practices of everyday life. These studies have interrogated what Aitken (2007) has called ‘popular finance’ or those projects and schemes aimed at incorporating low-income and middle-class households in financial markets: capital-funded pension plans (Langley, 2004; Waine, 2006), consumer credit (Montgomerie,2006),homemortgages(Langley,2008a)andothermass-marketed financial products. Coinciding with the financialization of the everyday is a shift towards financial markets for the provision of people’s basic needs. Whereas such ‘cradle to grave’services were previously provided by the welfare state, the employer or the savings account, the individual is now required to purchase financial products to protect against the uncertainties of life. The result of the democratizationoffinanceisthereforenotjustagrowthinfinancial flows,butanincreasedconvergence of finance and the life cycle. — Natascha van der Zwan, Making Sense of Financialization, 64

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines ‘popular finance’ as schemes incorporating low/middle-income households into financial markets via pensions, credit, and mortgages.
• XREF: Connects to the ‘complaints about immodesty’ framing — both show how institutional shifts reallocate responsibility and meaning across everyday life; also echoes the sacrifice article’s theme of institutions stabilizing social order, here via markets assuming cradle-to-grave functions. — connects to: Households are pushed into financial markets that promise lifestyle advancement. — Neil Fligstein & Adam Goldstein, The Emergence of a Finance Culture in…, 34; The erosion of pensions and benefits pushed households toward commercial financial products. — Neil Fligstein & Adam Goldstein, The Emergence of a Finance Culture in…, 55; Financialization ultimately represents markets displacing social institutions as society’s organizing principle. — Gerald F. Davis & Suntae Kim, Financialization of the Economy, 98 (+6 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Natascha van der Zwan, Making Sense of Financialization, 64

Related

• Financialization operates as decentralized power through everyday financial practices (similarity 0.83)
• Finance has become the primary arbiter of policy and value across daily life (similarity 0.81)
• The erosion of pensions and benefits pushed households toward commercial financial products. (similarity 0.80)
• Financial markets reshaped households, corporations, and states over the past 30 years. (similarity 0.80)
• Financial discourses do not dominate ordinary people’s saving behavior. (similarity 0.79)
• Households are pushed into financial markets that promise lifestyle advancement. (similarity 0.79)
• Financialization forced households to adopt a proactive finance culture beyond just consuming more debt. (similarity 0.79)
• Citizens and governments alike borrowed heavily, embedding finance in everyday life. (similarity 0.79)