The Everyday Life of Global Finance: Saving and Borrowing in Anglo-America

Grounded in literature from the sociology of finance and international political economy, and informed by extensive empirical research, The Everyday Life of Global Finance explores the unprecedented relationships that now bind Anglo-American society with the financial markets. As mutual funds have increased in popularity and pension provision has been transformed, many more individuals and households have come to invest in stocks and shares. As consumer borrowing has risen dramatically and mortgage finance has embraced those deemed sub-prime, so the repayments of credit card holders and mortgagors have provided the basis for the issue and trading of bonds and other market instruments.

The Everyday Life of Global Finance is an ambitious and innovative contribution to our understanding of the contemporary financial world. It shows how financial market networks have come to extend well beyond Wall Street and the City of London, becoming embedded and embodied in routine saving and borrowing in the US and UK. Society's new-found relationships with the markets are also shown, however, to be marked by stark inequalities, manifest contradictions, and political dissent.

Paul Langley is a political economist at the Division of Politics and History, Northumbria University, UK. While his principal research focus is on finance and the financial markets, Paul has also published on issues such as globalization, civil society, and environmental governance. He is author of World Financial Orders (Routledge, 2002), and his work has appeared in journals such as Competition and Change, Cultural Critique, Environment and Planning D, Global Networks, Review of International Political Economy, and Review of International Studies. Paul is also presently serving as Convenor of the British International Studies Association's (BISA) International Political Economy Group (IPEG).