9th Annual International Critical Finance Studies Conference (University of Leicester, 3-5 Aug. 2017)
CFP: 9th Annual International Critical Finance Studies Conference (University of Leicester, 3-5 Aug. 2017)
The 9th annual international Critical Finance Studies conference will be held at the University of Leicester from the 3rd to 5th August 2017. The conference is part of an on-going project that seeks to engage with finance in critical and creative ways. Although critical attention is regularly devoted to finance, it usually takes the form of a call for transparency, regulation or restructuring. It also tends to centre on ‘high finance’ rather than processes of financialisation, a term coined by Randy Martin that has proven useful for past Critical Finance Studies discussions. Indeed in this conference we plan to honour Randy’s legacy, following his untimely death, by focusing our keynotes and panel discussions on consideration of the ongoing implications of his work.
Contributions that engage with the discourse of financialisation, perhaps in unexpected spheres or through historical examples, are especially welcome, as are new approaches to ‘high finance.’
We invite papers that critically discuss the workings of finance (for example: its material culture, labour practices, conceptual models, technologies, built environments, authorized or unauthorized forms, etc.) in novel ways. We are interested in engaging with the problematic divide between the way finance is simultaneously lauded as a wealth creator and idealised career path, but also critiqued by popular culture and protest movements. Especially welcome are papers that approach finance through avenues that have been so far underexplored such as: theology, philosophy, art, music, film, new media, television, literary aesthetics, and popular culture.
Possible topics may include, but are not limited to:
Financialisation of daily life
Finance and desire
Financial publics, financial social imaginaries
Finance and risk society
Financial media and advertising
Finance and exclusion
Visualizing finance
Gambling and finance
Financial technologies
Built environments of finance
Stereotypes in financial discourses
Finance and neoliberalism
Philanthropy and finance
Finance in popular culture
Finance and gender, race, or religion
Finance and discrimination
Financial history for the present
Banking: structures, procedures and cultures
Money, credit and derivatives
Finance and postsecularism
Rethinking finance and critical theory
Finance and utopia
The poetics of finance
Finance’s role in the somewhat surprising political events of 2016
Communicating critical finance
Confirmed keynote contributors are Dick Bryan, Joyce Goggin and Bob Meister.
Please send proposals for panels as well as individual contributions (i.e. abstracts of up to 250 words or full papers if wished) to the conference organisers, John Morris (john.morris@ucl.ac.uk) and Simon Lilley (s.lilley@le.ac.uk) by 31st March 2017. As in previous years, we envisage a conference fee of around £100.