ABSTRACT
When it comes to the description of financial markets, numerous difficulties arise: recognizing their role in contemporary societies may indeed imply the revision of accepted discourses. Whatever the difficulty may be in describing financial practices, it remains a definitive task, however, especially in times of crisis. Tett (2009) recently noted that six years ago a ‘mapping’ of the financial system based on available discourse would have revealed that several parts of its landscape remained barely covered. In fact, ‘the Western financial system looked rather like an “iceberg” in media terms: one relatively small part of the system was visible, since it was extensively written about; a large chunk of activity, though, was submerged from sight, widely ignored’ (ibid.: 6). The iceberg metaphor prompts us to look under the surface of the financial landscape in order to describe what really lies within terms such as ‘liquid’ order books, ‘transparent’ price disclosures, and all the devices that constitute the financial sphere.
