Out of the Pits – Traders and Technology from Chicago to London - Softcover

Zaloom, Caitlin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0226978141 ISBN 13: 9780226978147

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2010

Synopsis

In "Out of the Pits", Caitlin Zaloom shows how traders, brokers, and global financial markets have adapted to the digital age. Drawing on her firsthand experiences as a clerk and a trader, as well as her unusual access to key sites of global finance, she explains how changes at the world's leading financial exchanges have transformed economic cultures and the craft of speculation; how people and places are responding to the digital transition; how traders are remaking themselves to compete in the contemporary marketplace; and how brokers, business managers, and software designers are collaborating to build new markets. A penetrating and richly detailed account of how cities, culture, and technology shape everyday life in the global economy, "Out of the Pits" will be required reading for anyone who has ever wondered how financial markets work.

About this title

Review:

"Zaloom's superb book is a double-site ethnography [that shows how] the appearance of chaos hid a complex social order, which Zaloom delineates beautifully." - London Review of Books "The book is half fascinating cultural portrait and half in-depth academic text.... What emerges from the mix is a nuanced, bottom-up picture of Chicago's economic importance in the world market, and how our city's working-class swagger has shaped derivatives trading from the inception of the market." - Time Out Chicago"

About the Author:

Caitlin Zaloom is a cultural anthropologist and an associate professor in the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at New York University. Her research on traders and technology has been featured in the New York Times and on the BBC.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0226978141
• ISBN 13: 9780226978147
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240