Full Description
Australia is in the midst of a major social and economic experiment that centres on financial risks being shifted onto ordinary people. We are being asked to manage ourselves as if we are businesses, and these businesses are being squeezed tighter and tighter.Households are taking on more risk and financial stress, implicitly accepting demands that they be stable, secure payers. What is driving this, and how might we resist it?Risking Together: How Finance is Dominating Everyday Life in Australia explains what is systematic about this ârisk-shifting' onto households, explores the frontier of financialised profit making, and includes suggestions on pushing back.âThis brilliant and timely book shows how a silent yet pervasive transformation has taken place in Australian society ⦠Bryan and Rafferty show how finance has become implicated in all aspects of social life and how mundane household financial transactions are now central to the economic stability of the nation.'Lisa Adkins, Head of the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney and Academy of Finland Distinguished Professor, University of Tampere, Finland.âIn the world of post-blockchain technologies we're looking to build new ways of risking together. The work of Bryan and Rafferty has been inspiring. This new book presents us with concepts and methods of analysis that are groundbreaking.'Akseli Virtanen, CEO, Economic Space Agency, Oakland, California and Berlin.
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
List of abbreviations
Preface Introduction 1. Financial ways of thinking and the risks they reveal
2. Risk and the intrusion of finance into daily life
3. Financialised work: re-thinking employment through finance
4. Finance beyond work: debt, superannuation and securitisation
5. A hedge fund of your own life: households in financial markets
6. Making households profitable for finance
7. Pushing back in a financialised way
8. Short cuts: lean, prime propositions
Appendix 1: types of derivatives - futures, swaps, options and securities
Appendix 2: data sources and calculations
References
Index
