Galit Ailon- Research projects

In the past years I have been engaged in an ethnographic study of the popularization of finance in Israel. Focusing on a concrete, local site of the global expansion of finance markets, my goal is to explore the cultural processes at the root of the growing public infatuation with finance. The expansion of finance, I argue, marks deep transformations in broad meaning structures. These transformations do not merely pertain to markets and to economic agency but also to non-market social institutions and even to the relational orientation of "Self" to "Other." My study seeks to unravel the dramatic shifts in meaning and social sensibilities that financialization entails.