Mar 9, 4:30 PM: Megan Tobias Neely, "Hedged Out: Inequality and Insecurity on Wall ...

The rising incomes of top earners, who are mostly White men, drive current trends in widening economic inequality in the United States. I present an insider’s look at the inner workings of the notoriously rich and secretive hedge fund industry as a case study of the U.S. working rich. Drawing from in-depth interviews and field observations, I find that the industry’s White male domination and extremely high earnings are deeply intertwined. This case study captures the upper echelons of a society in which elite White masculinity has been redefined as the capacity to manage risk and uncertainty. Facing an unpredictable stock market, hedge fund workers build networks and workplaces organized around trust. In this context, bureaucracy has become understood as the force of inefficiency and patronage as the most efficient and secure way to do business. At hedge funds, patrimonialism allows a select group of mostly White men to groom and transfer capital to one another. I argue that networks of trust have returned as the fabric of enterprise in late-stage finance capitalism and that this helps to explain the gender, race, and class dimensions of widening income and wealth inequality. Megan Tobias Neely is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab at Stanford University and an incoming Assistant Professor in the Department of Organization at Copenhagen Business School. Her research examines rising economic inequality through the lens of gender, race, and social class. Her recent book with Ken-Hou Lin, entitled Divested: Inequality in the Age of Finance, examines how the expansion of the U.S. financial sector is a fundamental cause of rising economic inequality. She is currently writing a book on the hedge fund industry on how race, gender, and social class underpin the social fabric of the U.S. financial elite. Part of the Gender, Sexuality and Global Capitalism Project.

Date: March 9, 2020
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

See:https://www.facebook.com/events/2592365701043636/