ABSTRACT

One of the best ethnographic works on the development of capitalism is A. F. C. Wallace’s historical ethnography of a village in Delaware. Living with capitalism, as with any other arbitrary, is a trigger for human intelligence, whether it is to imagine new ways of accumulating more capital, or new ways of reining in this accumulation, and then to transform imagination into collective action. The word “trust,” of course, is as foundational to banking and capitalism as it is to ethnomethodology. The founders of Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts (KKR) were investment bankers, experts in financing, modeling, and spreadsheets. Their innovation made the possibilities of debt-fueled finance inescapable for other investors. KKR had played, deeply, and they appeared to have won. For many intents and purposes the fact started by KKR became “immortal,” in Harold Garfinkel’s provocative word, for those who entered the field after the Houdaille deal surfaced.