The Making of Homo Financius: Conventions, Emotions and Morality in Financial Education

Le prochain séminaire de l'Axe Gouvernance Économique accueille Daniel Maman, Professeur invité de sociologie au Département de sociologie et d'anthropologie de l'Université Ben-Gourion du Néguev. 

The Making of Homo Financius: Conventions, Emotions and Morality in Financial Education.

Résumé :

The individualization, privatization, and marketization of risk management are defining features of current financialized capitalism. Under these conditions, individuals are required to manage economic and social risks of various types through their participation in the financial arena. This neoliberal project of responsibilization implies the constitution of subjects exhibiting the competencies considered as necessary to engage with financial products and services in what is defined as the proper and efficient manner to assure their present and future welfare. Practices of financial education serve as an important instrument for delineating and promoting the constitutive cognitive, emotional, and moral dispositions of the desired homo financius. This paper examines the ways in which financial education conducted by state and non-state agencies in Israel defines, explains, and justifies proper financial conduct and the individuals’ characteristics underpinning them. I show that these programs mobilize three basic discursive devices: conventions, emotions, and moral imperatives. Through these discursive devices, which connect individuals’ desired subjectivities to the individualization, privatization, and marketization of risk management, financial education contributes to the normalization of the ideational and institutional logics of the financialization of everyday life.

La séance se tient de 10h à 12h à la fois en présentiel à Sciences Po, en salle K.008 et en distanciel sur zoom. Si vous souhaitez y assister, merci de contacter Samia Ben.