ABSTRACT
How is it that people are so willing to pay financial investors large sums of money when it is not at all clear that these investors are especially capable of outperforming the market? This is not the first case of an apparently exploitative relationship flourishing between two consenting parties. The sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has developed theories addressing such questions based upon his own practical investigations into similar seen, but unseen, social practices in the field of education. We must understand that people are cultural creatures who, throughout an entire lifetime, have been exposed to a complicated web of cultural understandings that pattern their relationship to the investment game. Given the extent of all of the cultural baggage regarding the investment game that people “bring to the table”, perhaps the fact that people consume the services of investment professionals is, as opposed to being inexplicably irrational, quite reasonable after all.
