Motivating risk? The sublime supplement of market exchange

Abstract

Purpose

That which is exchanged in financialised trading extends beyond the moment, being elongated in the rights, responsibilities and liabilities it confers and so liable in nature as to throw into question the very attribute of thingness traditionally associated with exchange. The purpose of this paper is to examine the implications of these issues for articulation of what actually takes place at the moment of exchange.

Design/methodology/approach

This research paper examines key moments in the oral histories that constitute the “City Lives” archive at the British Library, focussing upon interchanges between interviewers and traders in which the gulf between the two and their modes of articulation is exposed by the interviewers' incomprehension of the work of the trader. Here, not only is the disconnection between trading and more routine transactions revealed, but also that between the narrative resources of traders and others.

Findings

Whilst there are various reasons identified for a general inability to convey to an outsider the inside of the practice, particular issues are also at play in financial exchange; primarily the sublime aestheticisation of jeopardy that may be seen to lurk at the heart of the taking of risk.

Originality/value

Financialised trading's disconnection requires attention to situation so that the texture of the disconnection itself can be put into context and a theorisation of the moment of exchange that can mediate between those who engage in it and attempt to describe it and those who seek to understand it from the outside.

Citation

Lightfoot, G., Lilley, S. and Pelzer, P. (2009), "Motivating risk? The sublime supplement of market exchange", Society and Business Review, Vol. 4 No. 2, pp. 110-122. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465680910965931