A Macat analysis of Karen Z. Ho’s Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street Audiobook

In 2009’s Liquidated, anthropologist Karen Z. Ho takes the tools of ethnographic research, which are traditionally used to study distant societies, and instead uses them to dissect the culture of high finance on New York’s famous Wall Street. Through close observation of the daily lives of the bankers working there, and the beliefs, rituals, and timeframes that define them, Ho uncovers a distinct culture in which she finds the ultimate causes of the financial crises of recent times. In a challenge to the popular view of the market as somehow ruled by abstract, unintelligible forces, Ho shows that it is in fact the particular value system of the world of finance itself, where pressure is high and job security is minimal, that causes market convulsions–and then the often negative consequences for society at large. Above all, Wall Street culture values liquidity, the ability to convert everything into a commodity that can be bought or sold, with the aim of creating profit for shareholders, often at the expense of long-term growth and security.