Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Diğer Uluslararası Fon Programları, 2021 - 2026
While economic theories of the homo economicus assume an innate,
universal sense of rationality, sociological and anthropological
research suggests that economic subjectivities and actions are shaped by
socio-cultural and material processes. Rationalities, in the plural,
are produced, rather than innate. Indeed, a long tradition of economic
sociology theorizes the processes that produce differences in economic
subjectivities (economic habituses, to use Bourdieu’s term) across
social groups and over time. In the context of everyday financial
practices, recent studies in the financialization of everyday life,
market studies, the French sociology of conventions, digital sociology,
economic anthropology and geography have suggested that contemporary
economic subjectivities are increasingly co-produced by digital devices
(such as financial apps, websites, and the algorithms that underpin
them), by prefiguring rational subjects and even making ‘rational’
choices on their users’ behalf. While these studies provide key insights
into how digital financial devices perform specific economic
subjectivities, they have paid less attention to how they shape social
patterns of economic subjectivities - a question that has been central
to the sociological tradition on the topic. One notable exception is
sociological research on credit scoring and eligibility algorithms,
which suggests that by delineating who gets access and who is denied
particular credits, mortgages and investments, these devices produce
social groups with different objective financial chances – and thus
become a new structuring force of society. This research explains how
digital financial devices structure society by producing groups with
different financial opportunities; however, it says little about how
they shape groups with different economics subjectivities, habituses and
rationalities. The proposed project fills this important gap by
unpacking the processes – not limited to eligibility - through which the
digitalization of financial services reproduces, deepens, flattens or
rearranges social differences in economic subjectivities. I am applying
for the SNSF Project Grant to carry out two interconnected qualitative
research projects. Project I. (1) compares the economic subjectivities
that are scripted into three types of digital financial products,
targeted traditionally different social classes: digital
wealth-management (targeted at the upper class), mortgage (targeted at
the middle and upper class) and consumer credit (targeted at the middle
and lower class) apps and websites; and (2) examines the social
categorizations that underpin their segmentation, targeting and
customization practices. Project I. uses 50 expert interviews with
product managers, digital consultants, IT and marketing professionals
involved in the development of these digital financial products at
fintechs and banks, and focuses on processes through which they designed
their choice architecture, personalized advice and pricing algorithms,
consumer interface and consumer segmentation. The interviews are
complemented by a comparative analysis of the products themselves (15 in
each of the three categories), using observations and discourse
analysis of the conception the consumer conveyed by the website’s/app’s
texts, images and functionalities and reverse engineering. Project II.
focuses on the consumer side of the processes through which classed
economic subjectivities are developed. It looks at how the economic
subjectivities called forth and scripted into the products studied in
Project I. are appropriated by consumers themselves and the way the
three types of products attract and deter consumers of different social
backgrounds. This project is composed of (1) 30 interviews and
participant observations with existing users of the three product types;
and of (2) 30 lab observations of how consumers of different class
backgrounds interact with financial devices (both with those that are
targeted at them and with those targeted at other classes). The project
will make a key contribution to (1) the financialization of everyday
life field by examining how the subjectivity-formation processes
identified by this literature form social patterns; (2) economic
sociology debates on contemporary processes shaping inequalities and
social divisions; and (3) market studies by providing a deeper
understanding on the social effects of segmentation and product design
in the digital financial realm.