Financialized practice depends on genuine play and autonomy, not just hegemony

Evidence

So understanding Pokémon cards as a financialized practice, one in which children internalize, play with and rearticulate the ambient codes and cultural thematics of the financialized societies in which they live, should not lead us to the conclusion that they are purely hegemonic in a reductionist sense of that term (a one-way, rulingclass effort to re-educate subalterns and, thus, reproduce dominant social relations). Yet it is equally important to note that, like money, Pokémon cards do not exist in a vacuum where their value is purely a matter of interpersonal negotiation and convivial play. More accurately, Pokémon is a site where we can see multiple frames of value at work. Like an ocean gyre, it is a meeting-point of multiple, con- flicting and complex currents, within which material debris ebbs and flows. In children’s Pokémon card play we can find a key example of the way financialization is articulated in daily life, but also the way that articulation enjoys and, indeed, depends on an interval of play, autonomy and creativity that cannot simply be reduced to superstructural ephemera. — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 389

Categorization

• XREF: The claim that cultural articulation requires an interval of play and creativity directly grounds deWaard’s cultural argument about finance needing cultural autonomy to colonize it. — connects to: Financialization is reproduced from everyday life, not imposed by an autonomous elite — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 129; The legitimate investor is distinguished from the gambler only by a socially constructed discourse — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 327; Commodifying play does not exhaust what play genuinely provides — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 368 (+6 more)
• SEED: An essay angle: how children’s collectible-trading games teach financial literacy and valorize speculation — a case study of financialization’s cultural reproduction.

Broader Connections

• Financialized commodity culture depends on the autonomy and creativity it purports to swallow. #corroborates (0.92) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 567
• Financialized power conflicts are won by deploying imaginative resources rather than capital #corroborates (0.78)
• Financial practice expresses class and acts as a control mechanism #contradicts (0.75) — Natascha van der Zwan, Making Sense of Financialization, 20
• Commodified resistance reinforces the individualization that finance depends on #expands (0.70) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 532