Dissertation Research: Worldview of Investment Banks

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This dissertation research project by a cultural anthropology student at Princeton University will conduct an ethnographic study of the world views and rhetoric of investment bankers and other actors on Wall Street (including popular media representations as well as the local personnel). The project will analyze `Wall Street's` views of the sweeping social and economic changes occurring through corporate restructuring and changing global employment patterns and wealth concentrations. The particular focus is the construction of Wall Street rhetoric which makes restructuring and downsizing and the social and economic upheavals they create seem legitimate and necessary in the name of efficiency. The student, who previously worked in an investment bank, will conduct general participant observation and structured interviewing on views in general and on one particular event in particular, to capture the multiple and competing world views and actions and shed light on the actual struggles and power relations involved in a case of downsizing, instability and inequality. The project will make an important connection between the understandings and actions of Wall Street actors and the social relations in which the actors are engaged, and will contribute to understanding `global capitalism` by exploring the relationships between world view and economic behavior.