ABSTRACT
Our volume has shown how the financial sector in its current form is an arena driven by specific emotions and conflicts that undermine the democratic constraints of civilising norms. Banks are now so impersonal and distant that it is difficult to imagine social emotions like shame applying. Whether that is so, our major argument is to specify how ‘affective neutrality’ can never apply to money. A thorough social science must necessarily study emotions for an inclusive interpretation. Banks’ so-called ‘democratisation’ of credit has, since 2008, driven the world to a full crisis and subjected populations to austerity. This is really a betrayal of society but far from ‘moralising’, we have explored its emotional causes, the fragility of the institution of money past and present, and its emotional consequences. Relations of creditors and debtors are treated in a commodified way, allowing high bank profits and the further de-socialisation of reciprocal obligations over time. Banks seek – blindly or wilfully – new ways to destroy economic life, and these threaten more irrational outcomes, even for the sector’s own ‘interests’ and rational actions. Doubts emerge from many places about the efficacy of imposing further poverty and despair. The norms and emotion rules of banks and financial firms encourage lack of care for the world.
