Charles W. Smith - Böcker

Rather than attempting to explain and predict how 'the Market' functions - a futile endeavor - this book focuses upon the rich teachings that the market offers us for dealing with ambiguities and unexpected and contradictory happenings. These teachings are not intended to master the market, but to sensitize us to the various types of uncertainty that the market and life in general present. Drawing upon years of 'participant-observation' research the book explores the ways people have traditionally tried to 'make sense' out of the inconsistencies and general 'fickleness' of the market. The various market narratives generated by these efforts normally function only to deny the inconsistencies confronted not resolve them. Various market routines are similarly explored and shown only to insulate participants from these market inconsistencies and related unexpected happenings. While both coping practices commonly serve to calm us by denying and insulating us from these uncertainties, they seldom if ever actually resolve them.Fortunately, the market suggests another, less acknowledged coping practice, namely 'acting sensibly.' In this shift from 'knowing' to 'doing,' the book explores practices employed in wrestling with the underlying causal forces that generate the bulk of unexpected happenings. This is followed by a closer look at some of the new teachings of the present-day, modern, global market with its numerous new trading instruments, algorithmic trading programs, high frequency trading, and Big Data. This new market is shown to be a hybrid of making sense and acting sensibly as it employs both narratives/accounts and concrete trading transactions. The final chapter uses the market to suggest how we might best learn to cope with these newer types of uncertainties rather than futilely trying to master them. While all of these teachings are presented primarily in the context of the market, they apply equally to a wide range of other social sectors, most of which have themselves become shaped in various degrees by today's market.

Long the preferred method of exchange for antiques and horseflesh, auctions are used today to sell everything from bestselling books to real estate, government bonds to abandoned automobiles. As sociologist Charles Smith reveals, the mechanical law of supply and demand rarely governs the auction process. Rather value is determined by a complex social process combining both the beliefs and actions of the auction participants and the assumptions and practices on the auction floor. Based on years of participation in and observation of different types of auctions and interviews with hundreds of auctioneers, Smith gives us not only a theoretical understanding of the auction process but the sights and sounds as well.

This book takes the reader on an insider’s tour of the psychology of stock market investing. In more than 3,000 hours of interviews and observations, Smith granted some of the most famous insiders on Wall Street the protection of anonymity to procure their deepest and most frank views on the operation of the market. Their words are heard here in vivid and often surprising detail. What emerges is a startling portrait of how the prejudices of six different types of players—fundamentalists, insiders, cyclists, traders, efficient market believers, and transformational idea adherents—influence the ups and downs of the market. Smith explains how new trends, such as computer trading and mutual and retirement fund investing, interact with these psychologies—drawing a remarkable picture of how market behavior is inherently more human than technical.

Over the past thirty-five years, Canada’s provinces and territories have undergone significant political changes. Abandoning mid-century Keynesian policies, governments of all political persuasions have turned to deregulation, tax reduction, and government downsizing as policy solutions for a wide range of social and economic issues. Transforming Provincial Politics is the first province-by-province analysis of politics and political economy in more than a decade, and the first to directly examine the turn to neoliberal policies at the provincial and territorial level.Featuring chapters written by experts in the politics of each province and territory, Transforming Provincial Politics examines how neoliberal policies have affected politics in each jurisdiction. A comprehensive and accessible analysis of the issues involved, this collection will be welcomed by scholars, instructors, and anyone interested in the state of provincial politics today.