Tischer, D., Maurer, B. and Leaver, A.D. orcid.org/0000-0001-6199-6057 (2019) Finance as ‘bizarre bazaar’: using documents as a source of ethnographic knowledge. Organization, 26 (4). pp. 553-577. ISSN 1350-5084
Abstract
Markets and finance have long attracted ethnographic interest but the nature of their activity - opaque, secretive, and increasingly placeless – precludes traditional ethnographic fieldwork. In this paper we propose documents as an alternative access point to these organisations as an ethnographic object of enquiry. Documents do not only present a written record, they also enact relationships and encode tacit understandings. We develop Geertz’s work on the bazaar by taking an indire ct route to access the field site – Collateral Debt Obligations – through documents. In reading these documents, we assume the position of investors who, in the absence of alternative publicly available information, are dependent on the documentary accounts made available to them by the sellers. These media act in ways that are similar to tourist guidebooks, a comparison we use to reframe the exchange as one that builds upon sociocultural relations rather than the abstract market relationships described by m ainstream economists. We propose that these documents are not merely representational artefacts of the organisation, but serve to establish and maintain social relationships between buyers and sellers through the management, standardisation and ritualisati on of information disclosed to the investor.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 The Authors. This is an author produced version of a paper subsequently published in Organization. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher's self-archiving policy. Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). |
Keywords: | Ethnography; documents; collateralised debt obligations; finance; markets; bazaar; secrets |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Management School (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number INDEPENDENT SOCIAL RESEARCH FOUNDATION UNSPECIFIED |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 08 Oct 2018 13:01 |
Last Modified: | 22 Apr 2021 13:17 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | SAGE Publications |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1177/1350508418808231 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:136408 |