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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons™
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Articles 1 - 5 of 5
Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences
Scenes From A Power Struggle: The Rise Of Retail Investors In The Us Stock Market, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington
Scenes From A Power Struggle: The Rise Of Retail Investors In The Us Stock Market, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington
Brooke Harrington
This chapter examines the mass movement of Americans into investing during the 1990s as both a consequence and a cause of contested power between corporations and individuals. This movement was part of a larger historical pattern of economically marginalized people consolidating their power through associational strategies in the realm of finance. Using US investment clubs as a case study, the chapter draws on Foucault’s theories to illuminate the bilateral power structure of modern capitalism, in which market institutions and small groups at the grassroots level mutually influence one another. While the investment club movement was in part a response to …
Trust And Estate Planning: The Emergence Of A Profession And Its Contribution To Socioeconomic Inequality, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington
Trust And Estate Planning: The Emergence Of A Profession And Its Contribution To Socioeconomic Inequality, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington
Brooke Harrington
This article offers a new perspective on the connection between socioeconomic inequality and occupations by examining the impact of trust and estate planners on global wealth stratification. While many studies treat the professions as mirrors of inequalities in their environments, this article looks at the ways professionals participate in the creation of stratification regimes. Trust and estate planners do this by sheltering their clients’ assets from taxation, thereby preserving private wealth for future generations. Using tools such as trusts, offshore banks, and shell corporations, these professionals keep a significant portion of the world’s private wealth beyond the reach of the …
The Sociology Of Financial Fraud, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington
The Sociology Of Financial Fraud, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington
Brooke Harrington
If there is an Urtext for the sociology of fraud, it is surely Herman Melville’s 1857 novel "The Confidence Man . This “parable of the market economy” (Mihm 2007:4) follows the title character over the course of a day (April Fool’s Day, of course) as he plies his trade on a steamboat cruising down the Mississippi River—his trade being the extraction of money from his fellow passengers on pretexts ranging from donations to loans. The confidence man succeeds, Melville writes, not just because of his skill, but because the boat (much like the market as conceived in economic theory) is …
From Trustees To Wealth Managers, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington
From Trustees To Wealth Managers, Elisabeth Brooke Harrington
Brooke Harrington
This chapter will address the question: why did trusteeship become a profession in its own right after centuries as a voluntary undertaking? The question ties into the core themes of this volume because trustees are central actors in the intergenerational transmission of wealth, and, as a result, shape patterns of inequality (Harrington, 2012a). Trustees – now more often known as wealth managers– create and oversee the structures that allow families to remain wealthy over multiple generations.
Shame And Stock Market Losses: The Case Of Amateur Investors In The Us., Elisabeth Brooke Harrington
Shame And Stock Market Losses: The Case Of Amateur Investors In The Us., Elisabeth Brooke Harrington
Brooke Harrington
Losing money evokes a host of emotions, most of them painful. In his earliest work, Adam Smith wrote of the “embarrassment” and shame associated with financial losses, with bankruptcy being “the greatest and most humiliating calamity” of all (2010 [1776]: 149). More recently, the financial crisis of 2008 has been defined by shame, guilt, and anger, both at the individual and collective levels (Brasset and Clarke 2012). As United States Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson observed, “we have in many ways humiliated ourselves as a nation” (2008). These emotions may be particularly troubling for Americans, used to regarding their country as …