Ethics and Finance: A Derridean perspective on uncertainty, risk and finance.

金融与不确定性的互动所创造的伦理格局正如政治家、经济学家和社会科学家所暗示的那样，金融处理不确定性的方式引发了重要的伦理问题。金融往往将风险和不确定性混为一谈。这种风险和不确定性的结合在允许金融获得巨额利润方面发挥了关键作用，同时也在最近的金融崩盘中发挥了关键作用。这个研究项目利用雅克·德里达的伦理和正义概念，探索了金融与不确定性相互作用所创造的伦理图景。为什么要用人类学的方法来研究这种伦理图景？经济学家、政府、政治家和金融监管机构之间就如何将伦理嵌入金融领域进行了大量讨论，这些讨论都依赖于主流经济学的观点。然而，正如非正统经济学家德马蒂诺所主张的那样，事实证明，这种观点是不够的。德马蒂诺认为，我们需要一种人类学的方法来研究金融的运作，让理性的经济参与者复杂化，用社会和文化的方法来理解金融，揭示主流经济学所压制的视角。这些被压抑的观点是与金融伦理图景互动的关键。一种更微妙的方法对最近的2008年金融危机进行的许多伦理分析，都聚焦于个别银行家的不道德行为和贪婪。这些解释既隐晦又揭示，对于照亮或扰乱金融的社会世界几乎无济于事。这一研究项目提出了一种更微妙的方法来审视金融的伦理图景，超越了贪婪和傲慢的永恒部分。这个项目通过观察金融的日常内部运作和金融的决策过程来审视金融的伦理图景。也就是说，这个项目不是从结构、权力和代理的角度来分析伦理，而是关注Michael Lambek所说的“普通伦理”：金融世界日常运作和伦理主体的生产的伦理(Lambek 2011)。具体地说，通过解决三个主要问题来探讨金融的伦理。1)银行家、银行和金融/经济理论是如何将不确定性概念化的？2)不确定性的概念化如何影响金融领域的决策过程？3)这种不确定性的概念化有多道德？我将使用一系列来源收集数据来回答前两个问题。我将使用财经新闻来源、国家生活故事(National Life Stories)对在伦敦金融城工作的银行家的采访，以及我将对银行家和经济学家进行的采访。国家生活故事是一家口述历史田野调查慈善机构。从这些方法获得的数据将使用德里达的正义和伦理概念进行分析，以解决问题3。德里达的正义和伦理概念被选在这个项目中，因为它与人类学的利益密切一致，他的分析技术被证明对分析金融与不确定性的相互作用特别有用。潜在的应用和好处这项研究将特别有益于政策制定者、金融监管者、经济学家和其他人类学家，他们希望从社会和人类学的角度来理解金融的内部运作和决策过程，而那些分析金融世界的人通常不愿从这个角度来分析金融。

Ethical landscape created by finance's interaction with uncertaintyAs politicians, economists and social scientists have alluded to, the way finance deals with uncertainty raises important ethical issues. Finance tends to conflate risk and uncertainty. This conflation of risk and uncertainty has played a key in role in allowing finance to make huge sums of profit, whilst at the same time also playing a critical role in recent financial crashes. Using Jacques Derrida's concept of ethics and justice this research project explores the ethical landscape that is created by finance's interaction with uncertainty.Why an anthropological approach to studying this ethical landscape?The numerous discussions that have occurred between economists, governments, politicians, and financial regulatory authorities on ways to embed ethics within finance, have relied upon perspectives from mainstream economics. However, as DeMartino, a heterodox economist, argues, this perspective proves insufficient. DeMartino argues what is needed is an anthropological approach to examining the workings of finance, to complicate the rational economic actor, to take a social and cultural approach to understanding finance; to reveal the perspectives that mainstream economics suppresses. These suppressed perspectives are key to interacting with the ethical landscape of finance. A more nuanced approach Much of the ethical analyses of the recent financial crisis of 2008 have focused on the unethical behaviour and greed of individual bankers. These explanations obscure as much as they reveal and do little to illuminate or disrupt the social world of finance. This research project proposes a more nuanced approach to examining the ethical landscape of finance that goes beyond the eternal fractions of greed and arrogance. This project examines the ethical landscape of finance by looking at the daily inner-workings of finance and the decision-making process of finance. That is, rather than analysing ethics from the vantage point of structure, power and agency, this project focuses on what Michael Lambek calls the 'ordinary ethics': the ethics of the daily workings of the financial world and the production of ethical subjects (Lambek 2011). Specifically, the ethics of finance is explored by addressing three main questions. 1) How is uncertainty conceptualised by bankers, banks and financial/economic theory? 2) How does this conceptualisation of uncertainty inform the decision- making process involved in finance? And 3) How ethical is this conceptualisation of uncertainty? I will use a range of sources to gather data to address the first two questions. I will use financial journalistic sources, interviews with bankers working in the City of London conducted by National Life Stories - an oral history fieldwork charity, interviews that I will conduct with bankers and economists. The data gained from these approaches will be analysed using Derrida's concept of justice and ethics to address question 3. Derrida's concept of justice and ethics is chosen in this project as it aligns closely with anthropological interests, and his analytical techniques prove particularly useful for analysing finance's interaction with uncertainty.Potential application and benefitsThis research will be particularly beneficial for policy makers, financial regulators, economists, other anthropologists, that wish to understand the internal workings and decision-making process of finance, from a social and anthropological perspective that is commonly shunned by those who analyse the financial world.