Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London » (1)

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.

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 on 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.

“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.”—The London Review of Books

American Journal of Sociology

"A fascinating story, likely to be engaging not only for sociologists, particularly those interested in markets, but for other social scientists and nonacademic audiences as well."-American Journal of Sociology

Preface Acknowledgments

Introduction: Finance from the Floor

Chapter 1         Materials of the Market Chapter 2         Trapped in the Pits Chapter 3         Social Experiments in London Markets Chapter 4         The Work of Risk Chapter 5         Economic Men Chapter 6         The Discipline of the Speculator Chapter 7         Ambiguous Numbers

Conclusion: Practical Experiments

Notes Bibliography Index