Book Description
Financial markets have often been seen by economists as efficient mechanisms that fulfill vital functions within economies. But do financial markets really operate in such a straightforward manner? The Sociology of Financial Markets approaches financial markets from a sociological perspective. It seeks to provide an adequate sociological coneptualization of financial markets, and examines who the actors within them are, how they operate, within which networks, and how these networks are structured. Patterns of trading, trading room coordination, and global interaction are studied to help us better understand how markets work and the types of reasoning behind these trends. Financial markets also have a structural impact on the governance of social and economic institutions. Until now, sociologists have examined issues of governance mostly with respect to the legal framework of financial transactions. Contributions in this book highlight the ways in which financial markets shape the inner working and structure of corporations and their governance. Finally the book seeks to investigate the symbolic aspects of financial markets. Financial markets affect not only economic and social structures but also societal cultural images and frameworks of meaning. Barbara Czarniawska demonstrates how representations of gender relationships are a case in point. Arguing that financial markets are not simply neutral with respect to questions of gender but enhance certain images and interpretations of men and women. Addressing many important topics from a sociological perspective for the first time, this book will be key reading for academics, researchers, and advanced students of financial markets in Business, Management, Economics, Finance, and Sociology.

About the Author
Karin Knorr Cetina is a Professor of Sociology, University of Konstanz. Alex Preda is a Lecturer in Social Theory, University of Edinburgh.

 

CONTENTS
List of Figures ix
List of Tables x
List of Contributors xi
Introduction 1
Karin Knorr Cetina and Alex Preda
Section I. Inside Financial Markets
1. The Embeddedness of Electronic Markets: The Case
of Global Capital Markets 17
Saskia Sassen
2. How are Global Markets Global? The Architecture
of a Flow World 38
Karin Knorr Cetina
3. How a Superportfolio Emerges: Long-Term Capital Management
and the Sociology of Arbitrage 62
Donald MacKenzie
4. How to Recognize Opportunities: Heterarchical Search in a
Trading Room 84
Daniel Beunza and David Stark
5. Emotions on the Trading Floor: Social and
Symbolic Expressions 102
Jean-Pierre Hassoun
6. Women in Financial Services: Fiction and More Fiction 121
Barbara Czarniawska
Section II. The Age of the Investor
7. The Investor as a Cultural Figure of Global Capitalism 141
Alex Preda
8. The Values and Beliefs of European Investors 163
Werner De Bondt
9. Conflicts of Interests in the US Brokerage Industry 187
Richard Swedberg
Section III. Finance and Governance
10. Interpretive Politics at the Federal Reserve 207
Mitchel Y. Abolafia
11. The Return of Bureaucracy: Managing Dispersed
Knowledge in Global Finance 229
Gordon L. Clark and Nigel Thrift
12. Enterprise Risk Management and the Organization of
Uncertainty in Financial Institutions 250
Michael Power
13. Managing Investors: How Financial Markets Reshaped
the American Firm 269
Dirk Zorn, Frank Dobbin, Julian Dierkes, and Man-shan Kwok
14. Nothing but Net? Networks and Status in
Corporate Governance 290
Gerald Davis and Gregory Robbins
Index 313