Confidence as a means of labor – an ethnographic study on the role of aesthetics and practices of the banking business in Germany and Switzerland (DFG 2017- 2020)
Research Project funded by the DFG (10/2017-09/2020)
This research project aims at investigating into bank counselors’ daily practices of generating and maintaining confidence into their work of placing funds and into more or less nontransparent financial products offered to their customers. The ethnographic field study takes place in private banks in Germany and Switzerland. Providing microscopic insights into the workplaces and lifeworlds of bank counselors, the project seeks to establish a cultural anthropology of the bank business. The fieldwork will entail thick descriptions of the interplay of spatial atmospheres of local banks and their corporate identity on the one hand and on the other hand the daily interactions and routines of the counselors and customers, which deem deeply affected by the aesthetics of the banks. This micro-perspective is supplemented by an approach that considers the larger makro-contexts, such as the confidence crisis in the financial sector, which started 10 years ago as a result the worldwide financial crisis. In combining micro- and macro-levels of research and a variety of methods, such as participant observation, qualitative interviews and discourse analysis, this explorative study will generate also more general findings on the logics, forms and functions of a particular form of aesthetic economy. Strategies and effects of the commodification of emotions will be scrutinized in an underresearched particular economic field from a cultural perspective. From a theoretical point of view, this multi-layered project will lead to a fruitful entanglement of approaches dealing with “subjectified work” on the one hand and with the “atmospheres” of architecture from the perspective of cultural sciences on the other hand.
Head of roject:
Prof. Dr. Irene Götz, München
Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Oettingenstr. 67
80538 München
i.goetz@vkde.fak12.uni-muenchen.de
Research Assistant:
Thomas J. Heid, M.A.
Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Oettingenstr. 67
80538 München
Thomas.Heid@vkde.fak12.uni-muenchen.de
Student Assistant:
Luca Haugg, B.A.
Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
Oettingenstr. 67
80538 München
Luca.Haugg@vkde.fak12.uni-muenchen.de
Cooperation Partners:
Prof. em. Dr. Jacques Picard, University of Basel, Switzerland
PD Dr. Jens Wietschorke, University of Vienna
Project Publications:
Heid, Thomas J. (2017): Die guten Gefühle sind entscheidend! Ästhetiken und Praktiken der Emotions- und Vertrauensarbeit im Private Banking. In: Kuhn, Konrad J./Sontag, Katrin/Leimgruber, Walter (Hg.): Lebenskunst. Erkundungen zu Biographie, Lebenswelt und Erinnerung. Festschrift für Jacques Picard. Wien u.a., S. 114-124.
Heid, Thomas J. (2017): Reflexiones respecto a una Antropología de la Confianza. Estéticas y practices en la banca privada. In: Schriewer, Klaus/ López Martínez, Gabriel (Hg.): Avances de Antropología Económica. Revista Murciana de Antropología (24), S. 141-166.
Heid, Thomas J. (2010): Der Anlagekapitalismus lebt. Wie selbständige Finanzberater die
Wirtschaftskrise überstehen. In: Götz, Irene/Huber, Birgit/Kleiner, Piritta (Hg.): Arbeit in
neuen Zeiten. Ethnografien zu Ein- und Aufbrüchen. München, S. 103-122.