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Gaming the crisis: Derivatives and unemployment in Spain

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  • Jorge Núñez

Abstract

This article analyzes nonprofessional trading in derivatives during the Great Spanish Recession. It depicts playful engagements with speculative forms of credit and debt on the part of everyday people facing mass unemployment. The article calls into question contemporary theories of debt that characterize it as inherently destructive or inherently productive. My main argument suggests that credit‐debt dyads are constant sites of manipulation, negotiation, and improvisation informed by multiple registers of affect, knowledge, and value. In showing how play and playfulness arise in the field of finance, my research sheds light on extractive business models that exploit socioeconomic uncertainties as well as labor reforms advanced in times of recession. My ethnography traverses a variety of social terrains ranging from social media to brokerage firms, trading courses, stock exchanges, and self‐help workshops in order to complicate further the anthropological work on financialization. Without denying the negative and damaging effects of financialization, I focus on the contradictory ways in which ordinary citizens become financial subjects.

Suggested Citation

  • Jorge Núñez, 2021. "Gaming the crisis: Derivatives and unemployment in Spain," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 8(1), pages 61-73, January.
  • Handle: RePEc:bla:ecanth:v:8:y:2021:i:1:p:61-73
    DOI: 10.1002/sea2.12190
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Sara Rica & Yolanda F. Rebollo-Sanz, 2017. "Gender Differentials in Unemployment Ins and Outs during the Great Recession in Spain," De Economist, Springer, vol. 165(1), pages 67-99, March.
    2. Aaron Z. Pitluck & Fabio Mattioli & Daniel Souleles, 2018. "Finance beyond function: Three causal explanations for financialization," Economic Anthropology, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 5(2), pages 157-171, June.
    3. Zaloom, Caitlin, 2006. "Out of the Pits," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, number 9780226978130, Febrero.
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