Nationalism operates as a rationality entwined within financial fields

Evidence

For LiPuma, “a sense of nationalism” is one of the “entwined species of rationality that course the financial field,” alongside “self-esteem, competitive dynamic,” and a “speculative ethos” (14). Nationalism thus blends with traders’ diverse anxieties, fears, vulnerabilities, desires, and hopes, all of which are enacted through secular rituals “in which each participant imagines a world/market of imaginary others, similar in mind and interests” (182). … His traders’ stories challenge the view of speculation as parasitic on the community and devoid of moral responsibility. By contrast, speculators sought to make “ethical contributions” to the Japanese nation through their routine dealings with risk and arbitrage: “an ethical commitment to embracing the ambiguity and the unknowability of the market” (58). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 280

Categorization

• XREF: Miyazaki’s finding that speculation can be felt as patriotic/ethical pushes back against the parasitic-speculator trope — a genuinely counterintuitive anchor for the reader’s claim about financialized nationalism. — connects to: Financialization and national populism form a false binary, not opposing forces — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 390; Japanese derivatives traders framed speculation as ethical service to the nation — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 430; Ethno-nationalism now functions as symbolic insurance substituting for redistributive state provision — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 457