Liquidated: an ethnography of Wall Street

Acknowledgments ix Introduction: Anthropology Goes to Wall Street 1 1. Biographies of Hegemony: The Culture of Smartness and the Recruitment and Construction of Investment Bankers 39 2. Wall Street's Orientation: Exploitation, Empowerment, and the Politics of Hard Work 73 3. Wall Street Historiographies and the Shareholder Value Revolution 122 4. The Neoclassical Roots and Origin Narratives of Shareholder Value 169 5. Downsizers Downsized: Job Insecurity and Investment Banking Corporate Culture 213 6. Liquid Lives, Compensation Schemes, and the Making of (Unsustainable) Financial Markets 249 7. Leveraging Dominance and Crises through the Global 294 Notes 325 References 353 Index 369