The Social Life of Financial Derivatives ─ Markets, Risk, and Time

In The Social Life of Financial Derivatives Edward LiPuma theorizes the profound social dimensions of derivatives markets and the processes, rituals, and belief systems that drive them. In response to the 2008 financial crisis and drawing on his experience trading derivatives, LiPuma outlines how they function as complex devices that organize speculative capital as well as the ways derivative-driven capitalism not only produces the conditions for its own existence, but penetrates the fabric of everyday life. Framing finance as a form of social life and highlighting the intrinsically social character of financial derivatives, LiPuma deepens our understanding of derivatives so that we may someday use them to serve the interests of the collective good.

Edward LiPuma is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Miami and the author of Financial Derivatives and the Globalization of Risk, also published by Duke University Press.