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Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction: Anthropology Goes to Wall Street -- 1. Biographies of Hegemony: The Culture of Smartness and the Recruitment and Construction of Investment Bankers -- 2. Wall Street's Orientation: Exploitation, Empowerment, and the Politics of Hard Work -- 3. Wall Street Historiographies and the Shareholder Value Revolution -- 4. The Neoclassical Roots and Origin Narratives of Shareholder Value -- 5. Downsizers Downsized: Job Insecurity and Investment Banking Corporate Culture -- 6. Liquid Lives, Compensation Schemes, and the Making of (Unsustainable) Financial Markets -- 7. Leveraging Dominance and Crises through the Global -- Notes -- References -- Index

Part I of this Article analyzes some of the contemporary critiques of, and debates around, shareholder value in order to illustrate why many of these contestations demonstrate underlying gaps or problematic assertions in the history and politics of shareholder value, especially if they are delimited by the narrow legal frames and neoliberal assumptions of corporations. It also provides the context necessary to explicate and ground why shareholder primacy and ownership assumptions are historically and legally flawed, and how financial values and assumptions continue to be championed (and financial power elided), despite the recent implosions of shareholder value. Part II expands upon several leading scholars' work in showing the paradoxical and ahistorical nature of the shareholder ownership assumption and the conflation of primary and secondary financial markets. Throughout, this Article attempts to differentiate and disentangle multiple problems with the shareholder value interpretation by emphasizing Wall Street's undue influence, the myth and ideology of shareholder value primacy, and the intersections between them.

ABSTRACT  Countering the "mystique" of finance as abstract and disembedding, in this article I approach the financial market from the site of investment banking corporate culture to concretize large‐scale processes and access its effects in the world. By investigating Wall Street investment banks' role in two pivotal socioeconomic phenomena—rampant downsizings throughout "corporate America" and the financial bubble and bust of 2001—I explore whether financial crises and corporate downsizing can be better understood via Wall Street's quotidian practices. I draw theoretical inspiration from the figure of the downsized investment banker, who embodies and connects Wall Street's rationales for downsizing as well as "the effects." Although shareholder value and externalized market justifications are Wall Street's models for understanding downsizing, I move beyond these dominant assumptions, demonstrating that bankers' own work experiences, market temporalities, and organizational culture serve as an incisive model to explain Wall Street's role in downsizing and financial crisis. [Keywords: Wall Street, corporate downsizing, financial markets, shareholder value, organizational culture]

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In 1986, Elie Wiesel received the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of his victory over "the powers of death and degradation, and to support the struggle of good against evil in the world." Soon after, he and his wife, Marion, created the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity. A project at the heart of the Foundation's mission is its Ethics Prize-a remarkable essay-writing contest through which thousands of students from colleges across the country are encouraged to confront ethical issues of personal significance. The Ethics Prize has grown exponentially over the past twenty years."Of all the projects our Foundation has been involved in, none has been more exciting than this opportunity to inspire young students to examine the ethical aspect of what they have learned in their personal lives and from their teachers in the classroom," writes Elie Wiesel. Readers will find essays on Bosnia, the genocide in Rwanda, sweatshops and globalization, and the political obligations of the mothers of Argentina's Disappeared. Other essays tell of a white student who joins a black gospel choir, a young woman who learns to share in Ladakh, and the outsize implications of reporting on something as small as a cracked windshield. Readers will be fascinated by the ways in which essays on conflict, conscience, memory, illness (Rachel Maddow's essay on AIDS appears), and God overlap and resonate with one another.These essays reflect those who are "sensitive to the sufferings and defects that confront a society yearning for guidance and eager to hear ethical voices," writes Elie Wiesel. "And they are a beacon for what our schools must realize as an essential component of a true education."