Bankminded

“One of those rare scholarly accomplishments that opens up an entirely new perspective on what it took to transform an important financial institution into something closer to a vital social infrastructure.”

—Liz McFall, University of Edinburgh

“Challenging overly simplistic narratives of neoliberal financialisation, the insights on banking practices and consumer identities gained from this empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated account transcend national history.”

—Jan Logemann, University of Göttingen

“As a preeminent scholar on the financialisation of everyday life, Husz offers a masterful history of how banks became essential members of Swedish households.”

—Jeanne Lazarus, SciencePo, Paris

“Conceptually original, analytically sharp, and creatively researched, Husz’s study follows multiple threads to reveal the far-reaching but almost unnoticed penetration of banks into daily life.”

—Andrew Popp, Copenhagen Business School

This open access book explores the history of how banks and banking services have become part of everyday life. Taking welfare state Sweden as its setting, the book identifies key cultural challenges and shows how banks and finance companies made inroads into the workplace, the family, spaces of consumption and the world of social movements while also taking on tasks typically associated with state authorities. Focusing on this ‘bankification of everyday life’ reveals the historical links between the post-war welfare state and the financialised everyday culture of the late twentieth century. This book will be of interest to scholars of economic and cultural history and sociology, as well as those interested in the history of welfare states and the development of commercial surveillance.

Orsi Husz is a Professor of the History of Science and Ideas at Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research focuses on the cultural history of economic life in the twentieth century.