Using a variety of theoretical frameworks drawn from the social sciences, the contributions in this edited collection offer a critical perspective on the dominant paradigms used in contemporary financial activities. Through a detailed study of the organisation and functioning of financial intermediaries and institutions, the contributors to this volume analyse ‘finance in the making’, by shedding light on the structuring of banking and financial systems, on their capacity to prescribe action and control, on their modes of regulation and, more generally, on the process of financialisation. Contributions presented in this volume have been written by authors working within the ‘social studies of finance’ tradition, a research programme that emerged twenty years ago, with the aim of addressing a diversity of financial fieldworks and related theoretical questions. This book, therefore, sheds light on different areas that are representative of contemporary financial realities. Specifically, it first studies the work of financial employees: traders, salespeople, investment managers, financial analysts, investment consultants, etc. but also provides an analysis of a range of financial instruments: financial schemes and contracts, financial derivatives, socially responsible investment funds, as well as market rules and regulations. Finally, it puts into perspective the organisations contributing to this financial reality: those developing and selling financial services (retail banks, brokerage houses, asset management firms, private equity firms, etc.), and also those contributing to the regulation of such activities (banking regulators, financial market authorities, credit rating agencies, the State, to name a few). Each text can be read without any specific knowledge of finance; the book is thus addressed to anyone willing to better understand the intricacies of contemporary financial realities.

Table of Contents:
INTRODUCTION Finance as social science Isabelle Chambost, Marc Lenglet and Yamina Tadjeddine PART I Critical analysis of mainstream financial theory and its uses 1. Financial services – a collection of arrangements Yamina Tadjeddine 2. Taming the risk borne by financial products Pierre de Larminat 3. The political and moral imaginaries of financial practices Horacio Ortiz 4. The role of financial analysts in the social construction of financial value Isabelle Chambost 5. Public–private partnerships (PPP) between financing requirements and micro-economic governance: complementary scientific and real-world justifications Géry Deffontaines 6. The risk fluctuation: The consequences of avoiding interest rate risk Anne EA van der Graaf 7. What makes a price a price? Commensuration work on financial markets Hélène Rainelli-Weiss and Isabelle Huault 8. The leptokurtic crisis and the discontinuous turn in financial modelling Christian Walter 9. Beyond performativity: How and why American courts should not have used efficient market hypothesis Franck Jovanovic PART II Structural dynamics in the financial industry 10. Sources of risks in financial innovations: Embedded and additional risks in Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) Mohamed Oubenal and Laurent Deville 11. Junior stock markets and SMEs: An ideal relation? The case of the Alternative Investment Market Valérie Revest 12. Structures and measures for responsible finance Elise Penalva-Icher 13. Territories of finance – the Parisian case Yamina Tadjeddine 14. The workforce and professional training in banks Marnix Dressen 15. Cooperative banking: Finding a place for the social in finance? Pascale Moulévrier 16. Relationship banking – an ‘endangered species’? Evidence from Germany Eileen Keller 17. The future of stock exchanges has a long past: What can we learn from financial history? Paul Lagneau-Ymonet and Angelo Riva 18. Compliance and the regulation of practices: A two-fold paradox Marc Lenglet 19. Financial regulation: A question of point of view Jacques-Olivier Charron PART III A new system of accumulation 20. Sociological domestication of a financial product. The case of derivatives David Martin 21. The work of financialisation Eve Chiapello 22. Circuits of trust and money: The resilience of the Italian Credito Cooperativo Valentina Moiso 23. Justification and critique in the credit rating system: Reaffirming the power of agencies Benjamin Taupin 24. The Function of finance: An ethnographic analysis of competing ideas Alexandra Ouroussoff 25. At the very heart of financial dominance: The case of LBOs Isabelle Chambost 26. The internationalisation of the mutual fund sector and the origin of the financialisation: A historical process of production rules Caroline Granier 27. Conceptualising finance within the capital–labour nexus: Asset management as a new zone of social conflict Sabine Montagne 28. Democracy and the political representation of investors: On French sovereign debt transactions and elections Benjamin Lemoine 29. Knitting together finance and our daily lives Jeanne Lazarus 30. Making sense of the economy: A debt network coordinated by currency Michel Aglietta Conclusion: What finance manufactures Olivier Godechot