The politics of finance: cultural economy, cultural studies and the road ahead.

Cultural economy of finance examines the cultural constitution and implications of financial markets in light of the growing financialization of economies and social life. In the effort to explain ‘how finance actually works’, it rejects both depoliticized mainstream financial economics and predetermined Marxist political economy. However, this rejection has resulted in a lack of analyses of the politics of finance. In this paper, I suggest that cultural economy of finance should nurture a form of analysis indigenous to cultural studies – provisional framework building – whereby politically urgent and contextually specific frameworks could be offered to provoke debate about the power relations within and political impacts of financial activity. I offer a description of provisional framework building based on key commitments of cultural studies, and several examples of the practice that have already taken place in research on financial markets. More of this work can create a more rigorous and grounded understanding of the politics of finance within the umbrella of cultural economy of finance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]