Virtue, Fortune and Faith: A Genealogy of Finance

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2005

HG171

2004-022501

0-8166-4415-2

Virtue, fortune and faith; a genealogy of finance.

Goede, Marieke de. (Borderlines; 24)

U. of Minnesota Press, [c]2005

235 p.

$22.95 (pa)

Goede (political history and international relations, U. of Amsterdam) explains how modern finance has acquired the reputation of economic necessity and scientific respectability when less than two centuries ago it stood condemned as irreputable gambling and fraud. He aims to disturb the depoliticized nature of finance theory and practice through a genealogical reading of the historical struggles, debates, controversies, insecurities, and ambiguities that had to be purged from nascent credit practices in order to produce the image of today's coherent and largely rational global financial sphere.