Bracketing the Nation: Lay Financial Trading in Israel

• Autores: Galit Ailon
• Localización: Current anthropology: A world journal of the sciences of man, ISSN 0011-3204, Nº. 2, 2019, págs. 245-261
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • In recent years, anthropologists have raised questions regarding the ways in which global financial cultures shape national imaginaries and sentiment. On the basis of an ethnographic study of the popularization of financial trading in Israel, I show in this paper that the calculative orientation of lay traders toward the nation involves attempts to cultivate what they refer to as “market cynicism”: a normatively detached perspective in which they set aside their sense of the sentimental meaningfulness of national events and focus solely on the events’ potential effects on prices. Since financial markets turn national events into objects of speculation, traders deem this inner-market bracketing of national meaning and sentiment critical for success. Although bracketing reifies the meaningfulness of the national outside the market, it also makes room for the development of a sense of “market citizenship” in Wall Street. Complicating existing understandings of global financial cultures, the paper shows how financial trading involves a double stance toward national events. Morally and practically, it both relies on and defers the cultural gravity of the nation.