ABSTRACT
Karen Zouwen Ho, the author of Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, was born in Chiayi in southwest Taiwan in 1971 to parents of Taiwanese origin, and grew up in the US state of Tennessee. She studied anthropology as an undergraduate at Stanford University in California, conducting her graduate studies at Princeton, eventually taking up a PhD in social anthropology. Ho works in the department of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, teaching anthropology of capitalism, finance, and globalization. Wall Street employers recruit their employees from prestigious universities where ideas of excellence and privilege are already present; finance and corporate employers consolidate these ideas, celebrating these students as the best, the smartest, and brightest. For those who land a job, the reality of Wall Street life proves far less glamorous. The practices of the financial sector have the profound potential to affect and disrupt the daily lives of ordinary people around the world.
