[Ias-public] The Institute for Analytical Sociology Seminar: Carly Knight, June 15, 14:30CET, Online on Zoom

[Madelene Töpfer]

The Institute for Analytical Sociology Seminar

Venue: Online on Zoom (see Zoom link in the end of the email)


Thursday, June 15 @ 14:30CET

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How to Manage the Market:
The Construction of the Economic Actor in Business Self-help, 1970-2020

Carly Knight
New York University

Abstract:
Financial self-help is a classically American genre. Since the inception of self-help literature, authors have emphasized the virtues of self-discipline and self-control in attaining worldly success. Sociologists have identified such books as "technologies of the self" designed to train actors in cultivating the attitudes, practices, and orientations necessary for operating in the market. But as the market has evolved, how has the "self" actors are told to cultivate changed? To address this question, we assemble a corpus of New York Times "best-selling" financial self-help books over the past fifty years. Using computational methods-specifically, word embeddings and dependency parsing- we measure changes in the themes addressed by the books, the characterization of economic actors, and the actions readers are advised to take. Our preliminary findings reveal significant changes in the depiction of economic actors over the last decades, with both global trends and changes aligned with market cycles. Notably, we observed a decline in market-oriented actions and an increase in self-oriented actions. Rather than urging readers to solely focus on disciplining their financial behavior to navigate the markets, newer publications encourage readers to regulate their emotions, habits, and behaviors, under the belief that these personal transformations will yield improved economic outcomes.

Topic: IAS Seminars
Join Zoom Meeting
https://liu-se.zoom.us/j/65535789369
Meeting ID: 655 3578 9369


Best regards
Madelene Töpfer
Administrator
[Linköping University]
Institute for Analytical Sociology
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