Abstract
Feminist political economic theory is the bridge between actor-network theory (ANT) of Science and Technology Studies (STS) and political economic theories in Bubbles and Machines: Gender, Information and Financial Crises. Micky Lee argues for the absence of acknowledgement that finance capital is gendered and financial markets are materially and technologically embedded. The critique of media studies scholars in the ‘insufficient attention to the materiality of media technologies’ (p. 14) introduces ANT as a mode of criticism that pays attention to the historical, cultural, social and rhetorical sides of science and technology. The book aims to theorise the relationship between finance capital and the media, with an approach that encompasses the historical, cultural, social, and rhetorical. The exploration of financial markets is discussed through the gendered characters of ‘the Tulip, the Poor Women, and the Shopoholic’ (p. 23) along with two technical devices of ‘financial news reporting and the trading screen’ (p. 23). These modes of discourse are used to discuss and critique financial crises and markets and are supported with semiotic, discourse, and narrative analysis. The introductory chapter provides an in-depth guidance to the structural significance of the volume, supported by a diagrammed direction on how each theme fits with the gendered characters and technical devices and the interlinks between each chapter. Following the structural and critical outlining in the introductory chapter, Chapter 2, ‘Tulipomania: Unchanging Gender Relations in Financial Capitalism’, shows the relationship between gender and the view of capitalism as a ‘natural political economic system that transcends time and space’ (p. 25) using Tulipomania as the gendered character of The Tulip. The following Chapter 3, ‘The Indebted Women: Microcredit and the Credit Card’, looks at the characters of the Poor Women and the Shopaholic to highlight the differentiation in credit and global financialisation between different economies. Financial news reporting is the central focus of Chapter 4, ‘Financial Information Reporting in the Earliest Wall Street’, and in Chapter 5, ‘The Screen, Financial Information, and Market Locale’ Hollywood and documentary films are used to explore the production and distribution of financial information. The concluding chapter fuses the title of the book of bubbles and machines, where the economy is the bubble, and in the context of financial crises is the feminine, while the machine is the masculine producers of financial information. Lee presents an alternative explanation to understanding financial crises where technology, as opposed to humanity, is the responsible party. This book would be of great interest to media, communication, sociology, and political science scholars.