Beginning with an original historical vision of financialization in human history, this volume then continues with a rich set of contemporary ethnographic case studies from Europe, Asia and Africa. Authors explore the ways in which finance inserts itself into relationships of class and kinship, how it adapts to non-Western religious traditions, and how it reconfigures legal and ecological dimensions of social organization, and urban social relations in general. Central themes include the indebtedness of individuals and households, the impact of digital technologies, the struggle for housing, financial education, and political contestation.

Chris Hann is a Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. His most recent book is Repatriating Polányi. Market Society in the Visegrád States (Central European University Press, 2019).

Don Kalb is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway, where he leads the Frontlines of Value project. Recent publications include Anthropologies of Class: Power, Practice, and Inequality, co-edited with James G. Carrier (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and Worldwide Mobilizations: Class Struggles and Urban Commoning co-edited with Massimiliano Mollona (Berghahn Books, 2018).

“An excellent collection of essays overall, this edited volume demonstrates the various ways financialisation takes shape and how lives are entangled with it. I highly recommend this book as it yields new insights into processes of financialisation and advances the scholarly literature.” • Anthropological Notebooks

“In the volume’s diverse discussions of distinct yet interconnected aspects, such as state policies and debt advisors, infrastructures and familial relations, Financialization will certainly become a standard reference on the subject. It should inspire further research, not only in directions laid out by the introduction and in the afterword, such as the longue-durée and the multiscale character of the current moment, or the capture of social forms by finance capital, but also stimulate further reflections concerning how anthropologists and other social scientists… come to know what they do about cap italism.” • Anthropos

“[This volume] shows how financialization and its social consequences can take rather different forms in different places… a solid foundation for a consideration of the basic nature of financialization and its effects.” • James G. Carrier, Indiana University Bloomington

“This is a very strong collection… the attempt to provide an anthropological understanding of contemporary financialization that goes beyond merely describing how variable it is, is highly welcome.” • Keir Martin, University of Oslo