Valeur financière et vérité. Enquête d’anthropologie politique sur l’évaluation des entreprises cotées en bourse, a book by Horacio Ortiz

Financial value and truth. A political anthropological study of the assessment of the companies listed on stock exchange

The financial industry has taken a prominent place in the global economy over the last thirty years. In the name of the dogma of market efficiency, it determines the value of companies listed on stock exchange using a standardized methodology inspired by neo-liberal financial regulations. The value of companies would therefore have a “truth” established by financial experts, making them the arbiters of the distribution of monetary resources on a global scale, and hence, of social justice.

The author, an anthropologist, immersed himself into the world of finance for several years, working as an analyst in financial companies in Paris and New York. His insight into the practices and daily real-life experiences of brokers, traders and other fund managers – which he sometimes brutishly restores – shows to what extent the “truth of the value” they formulate raises problem. Far from the liberal utopias it refers to, it is the product of multiple and contradictory injunctions and procedures, followed by persons who work in relations of competition and complementarity, both between themselves and between the companies they work for.

Through the example of finance, a critical reflection on the processes of creation of the contemporary global hierarchies.

2014 – Les Presses de Sciences Po

Language: French