A relational approach to the ethnographic study of power in the context of the city of London

Abstract

The immersive ethnographic tradition has strong potential to contribute to a deeper sociological understanding of the construction, maintenance and processes of powerful groups. However, ethnography as a method – and sociology as a discipline – has tended to focus more on developing techniques and toolkits for studying what Bourdieu and Wacquant call a “poverty population” rather than elites systems of power. In response, this article builds a much needed ‘toolkit’ for would-be-ethnographers, examining how ethnographic methodologies can be adapted to critically examine the elite cultural fields. It does so by adapting Desmond’s four foci of relational ethnographic: fields, boundaries, processes and cultural conflict. Adopting a relational orientation, this article provides an illustration of how ethnography can be used in the study of powerful cultural fields, using the context of the City of London, and thereby forming the basis for future research.

Introduction

How can ethnographers direct their in-depth observational analysis towards elite cultural fields? What are the possibilities of ethnographic inquiry when, what Nader (1997: 712) calls, the coercive harmony of power restricts the critical gaze of ‘outsiders’ from ever gaining insight into the embedded cultural practices? Given the enforced distance created by power, how can the would-be ethnographer overcome the challenges of access to successfully and immersively examine the life-worlds of elite cultural contexts? The simplest – and shortest – answer to these questions maybe to avoid undertaking such critical examinations of elites. However, there are grave repercussions of leaving cultural systems of power and privilege beyond the fine-grained ethnographic gaze; not least the risk that failing to critically examine cultures of elites only contributes to the relative naturalisation and, therefore, invisibility of both power and its sustaining cultural dynamics (Ceron-Anaya, 2017, 2018; Davis and Williams, 2017; Khan, 2012b; Souleles, 2021). Despite the recent resurgence in interest, sociology as a discipline – and ethnography as a method – has tended to focus more, empirically and methodologically, on studying what Bourdieu and Wacquant (1992: 232) call a “poverty population” than on elite systems of power (Archer and Souleles, 2021; Gusterson, 1997; Ho, 2009; Khan, 2012b). There has been, over the last decade, a gathering momentum amongst sociologists and anthropologists to reverse this methodological imbalance, shedding new light on the construction, maintenance and exercise of power (e.g. Archer and Souleles, 2021; Hart and Ortiz, 2014; Ortner, 2010; Souleles, 2021). However, despite this shift in attention, for the would-be ethnographer, there remains a paucity in generalisable methodological accounts to guide and aid critical ethnographic research through common pitfalls and challenges that elite cultural fields present.

Too often, ethnographies of power, especially in the context of finance, have been left to informed insiders with established connections (e.g. Ho, 2009; Mears, 2020; Zaloom, 2006) or have relied on stumbling upon, what Souleles (2018: 55) calls, a “magical informant or golden connection”, usually more through luck than design, that opens up an otherwise closed field (e.g. Fisher, 2012; Miyazaki, 2013). Whilst, in each case, the outcome has been vital and informative work, for the rest of us there are few clues as to how to begin to conduct ethnographies of elite cultural fields beyond empty epithets such as 'persistence’, ‘perseverance’ and ‘luck’. After all, the study of power is very much about the study of individuals, communities and organisations who do not want to be studied (Souleles, 2018, 2021). In response, and drawing on a 2-year ethnography of the highly stratified City of London’s financial services industry, this article examines and applies Desmond’s (2014: 547) four foci ethnographic inquiry – fields rather than places, boundaries rather than bounded groups, processes rather than processed people and cultural conflict rather than group culture. It extends Desmond’s (2014, 2017) relational ethnographic approach to reflect on how we, as ethnographers, can turn our critical attention to the small-scale, yet highly impactful, life-worlds of powerful groups.

Much recent debate concerning ethnography and power has called for a de-prioritisation of space in favour of an iterative tracing of networks, overlapping fields and de-bounded processes of globalisation (Burawoy et al., 2000; Marcus, 2013; Tsing, 2005), yet there is a need to retain critical, analytical attention on highly spatial, often ritualised, nodes of power – specifically, the concentrated spatial realities of finance (Cetina, 2005; Sassen, 2005; Souleles, 2021). Ethnographic debates have examined the possibilities of ‘studying up’ from ‘below’ (Sherman, 2007), a diversification of methods away from participant observation (Gusterson, 1997), building a network of informants through adjacent fields, networks and events (Ceron-Anaya, 2017, 2018; Ortner, 2010; Souleles, 2018) or the reliance of insider accounts (Ho, 2009; Mears, 2020; Zaloom, 2006). However, this continues to leave a space for direct, critical engagement with the sustaining cultures of power and the collective sense of identity and belonging such life-worlds engender (Ortner, 2010; Smithsimon, 2010). If, as Khan (2012b: 362) encourages us to think, the study of elites is to examine the production of power and inequality, one which, drawing on Souleles (2021), challenges the invisibilised and hegemonic reproduction of power, then, as ethnographers, we need to develop critical systems of analysis that allows us to enter the engine rooms of inequality and immersively examine the sustaining practices, rule systems and common assumptions that maintain privilege. In extending Desmond’s work to an analysis of these situated dynamics of power, this article contributes to the ethnographic literature by developing a set of reflexive, adaptive and generalisable strategies that will guide future research on the ‘lived experiences’ of hard-to-reach, elite social sites.

Studying up/studying finance

Tracing the shifts in inequality and cultures of power has long been a cornerstone of social scientific inquiry, from Veblen’s (2007) leisure choices and cultural character of dominant classes, to Mills’ (1956) and Domhoff’s (1967) examination of the shared origins and collective interests that solidify power amongst the elite, to Bourdieu’s (2010, 1996) theorisation of the maintenance and reproduction of elite taste and identity. However, ethnography has been, arguably, under-utilised when it comes to revealing the hidden contours and experiential life-worlds of elite cultural groups (Archer and Souleles, 2021; Ortner, 2010; Simpson, 2021). Half a century has passed since Nader (1972) originally called for ethnographers to ‘study up’ and get behind the coercive harmony of power. While there have been important ripples of response, the nature of ethnographic inquiry remains better suited to directing its gaze downwards, to accessible cultures of relative marginalisation, than it is to elite social spaces (Archer and Souleles, 2021; Ortner, 2010). The original aspiration of Nader’s call to study up was about making the picture of a given society whole. Without working to reveal the contours and experiences of the powerful, there is the danger that our work as ethnographers is reinforcing, not challenging, the epistemic distance and relative invisibility of elites (Ho, 2009; Stich and Colyar, 2015; Souleles, 2021).

Despite the wider challenges of ethnographers to reverse the direction of their critical gaze, amongst sociologists and anthropologist of finance there is important – and growing – ripples of response. Since Hertz’s (1998) and Abolafia’s (1996) pioneering examinations of the casino mentalities of Shanghai and New York, respectively, Zaloom’s (2006) analysis of technologisation and its impact on the trading cultures of Chicago and London and Ho’s (2009) depiction of the bravado, elitism and extreme work conditions of Wall Street have each responded to Nader’s (1972) call half a century ago. The years since the 2008 financial crisis have only served to reminder us of the power of finance and its pervasive grip on society (Carruthers and Kim, 2011; Dinerstein et al., 2014), rendering new ethnographic accounts of the performative rituals that sustain the market mechanisms more urgent (Beunza, 2016; Fisher, 2012; Simpson, 2021; Zaloom, 2012). Tracing the rapid developments across finance in the subsequent years, we have seen ethnographic accounts of high-frequency trading and its impact on cognitive and corporeal sense making (Borch et al., 2015; Lange et al., 2019; Souleles, 2019), the shifting gendered dynamics and performative hyper-masculinity of finance (Fisher, 2012; McDowell, 2011; Simpson, 2019) as well as individual and collective proclivities towards and opportunities to participate in high-risk encounters that reinforce attitudes of individualism and market based ‘freedom’ (Preda, 2017; Weiss, 2015), to foreground but a few. Together, this body of literature connects the micro experiences and life-worlds of individuals, groups and institutions to the global matrix of technological exchange, bringing new focus on how financial elites operate within a broader, idealised market framework as they embody its relentless speed, rhythms and flow of an increasingly techno-accelerated landscape (Borch et al., 2015; Hart and Ortiz, 2014; Simpson, 2019).

Such developments suggest a richness in ethnographic possibility and begin to reverse the traditional downwards gaze and, instead, establish a deeper understanding of the lived and ritualised experiences of power. At the forefront of this shift is the way ethnographies of finance have begun to challenge the all too pervasive structural accounts, conducted at a distance, that otherwise dominate our understanding and vision of finance (Hart and Ortiz, 2014; Mellor and Shilling, 2017). However, despite this growing contribution to ethnographic understanding of finance, there remains limited research strategies to guide future researchers through the divergent challenges and pitfalls the undertaking ethnographies of elite social spaces bring. All too often, ethnographies of finance have relied upon, what Souleles (2018: 55) calls, a “golden connection” that is both ungeneralisable and offers few clues for how the rest of us can approach fields of power – a research strategy that is, for the most part, based more on hope than design. With increased barriers of control and access, the study of elites – ethnographic or otherwise – demands an altered approach to allow entry into and examination of an all too closed social space. Such a problem points to a need for greater generalisable research strategies to guide and cultivate future ethnographies that make visible the often hidden or invisibilised cultures of power the structure our social world. Often this question is reduced simply to one of access, or as Hart and Ortiz (2014: 474) state, finding new ways to be there. How we, as outsiders, enter the closed world of finance (and other sites of power) is central, but not total. Reducing this question to simply one of access assumes the challenge is singular rather than multiple, linear rather than cyclical and only creates a false imaginary loosely characterised as the inside. Rather, the challenge about finding new ways to establish an ‘on-the-ground’ understanding of the situated rule systems of finance and work through the multiple layers of material and structural exclusion to aid future research into both the world of finance and fields of power.

A relational ethnographic approach to power

The central premise to a relational ethnography, as Desmond (2014: 547 & 554) argues, is to focus not on bounded groups nor shared social attributes, delimited by particular fields, but the processes and configuration of relations that weave together and connect individuals, organisations and exchange mechanisms. Placing Desmond’s approach in the context of power, it is possible to gain new insight into how elite cultures, such as finance, function and are sustained as a relational social system – a critical vantage that foregrounds the processes of structured action and knowledge production that maintains a culturally elevated ‘way of being’ (Becker and Aiello, 2013; Bourdieu, 1990; Khan, 2012a). Central to Desmond’s relational ethnography is a move away from how we, as ethnographers, study the social world, such as how we get behind the structures of power, and more on what we need to turn our critical attention towards. Whereas the question of how, in the context of elite fields, inevitably leads to barriers of access and the persistent, yet unattainable, lure of ‘insider knowledge’ (Ho, 2009), the focus on what begins to reveal the processes and configurations of relations that run through the interconnecting matrix of social interaction within a given setting (Desmond, 2014).

The illusive imaginary of the ‘inside’ will, all too often, remain forever out of reach in elite fields, with each step of progress only revealing a further layer ‘inside the inside’ that, like an Escher sketch, continues to fold in on itself (Ortner, 2010: 215). Unpicking the idea of ethnography as pitching tent, Ho (2009: 19) explains how such an approach “is not only implausible but also might be limiting and ill-suited to a study of the ‘power elite’”. Institutional barriers of power strategically rearrange, separate and conceal knowledge from the ethnographic gaze, necessitating an alternate – more ambiguous but ambitious – approach (Ho, 2009; Mears, 2015; Souleles, 2021). Drawing on a relational focus, centring on what to study, helps guide the researcher through the fields, boundaries, processes and conflicts that coalesce within a given setting, helping to give form to the relational configuration of social relations amongst different actors and institutions as the object of study. Shifting from how to what, in other words, uncouples ethnographies of power from simply that of access and, instead, creates a generalisable approach that is both more attuned and responsive to the specific contours of the field of study.

The move towards greater relationality in ethnography has worked to produce expansive, critical ethnographies that trace the iterative relationships within a global network of communication (e.g. Burawoy et al., 2000; Desmond, 2017; Marcus, 1995; Tsing, 2005). This work has successfully foregrounded, what Appadurai (1990) calls, ethnoscapes that are embedded within the complex, overlapping and disjunctive order of the global cultural economy. Here, the task of the ethnographer is to give ontological primacy to the configuration of relations that cannot be limited to groups or places, but flow through and across the multiple fields and which connect observable situations to global exchange networks and embedded historical relations (Desmond, 2014; Hart and Ortiz, 2014). Stepping away from ethnography, McKenzie (2004, 2019) has highlighted the importance of relationality across finance, helping us understand sites, such as the City of London, as part of a richer entanglement of technological communication, interaction and exchange that is intimately mapped onto space as well as time. This is to help us understand the City of London, not as a single monolithic entity, but as a constantly shifting and evolving social system of exchange; one which is situated within a global nexus of finance, comprised of dominant institutions from across the world (each with their own organisational differences), competing and allied occupational roles (from traders to brokers to investment bankers) that is encased within a regulatory system that creates its own complex web of ‘expert’ knowledge, training regimes and institutional practice (Desmond, 2014; Marcus, 1995).

Whereas relational approaches have, to date, largely built networks of analysis outwards, touching upon global structures of possibility and restraint, this article adapts the approach to focus inwards, on the individual life-worlds that both shape – and are shaped by – such structural conditions and which create a cultural ecosystem of experience. In doing so, it presents a generalisable approach to the study of elite fields and the social relations in the City of London; one which maps, traces and follows the fragmented contours of power to reveal the experiences, knowledge systems and valued social resources that flow across multiple social sites and function to form an intergenerational system of knowledge, belonging and identity.

Study site: The City of London

As the abstractions of finance accelerate the ‘seamless’ transference of people, capital and goods across a technologically connected global marketplace (MacKenzie, 2004; Christophers, 2009), there remains an exclusive cluster of human-scale settings in which financial markets are embedded spatially, materially, technologically and, above all, culturally (Sassen, 2005; Simpson, 2018; Zaloom, 2006). Here, the City of London is placed alongside New York, Shanghai and Singapore as one of the elite global financial centres (Wardle and Mainelli, 2021). Within this tight 1.22 square mile configuration, the ephemerality of financial abstraction is manifest within an observable set of social relations, strategic actions, ritualistic rule systems and unfolding material topography. Existing on two interconnected registers, the City is simultaneously part of a global network of finance, aligned with dominant institutions of the state, regulatory control and knowledge production as well as a situated material and spatial arena in which the financial markets are realised, sustained and performed (Christophers, 2009; Mackenzie, 2018; Sassen, 2005; Simpson, 2019, 2021).

In this context, this article draws on a study which examines the everyday practical and cognitive relations of finance work – its rhythms, trials and boundaries – and analyses what it means to live and work within this exclusive industry. At the heart of the project was the question of harm and its legitimation. That is to challenge the problems that elites create in the world (Khan, 2012a: 479) and to examine the techniques of routinisation and neutralisation within what is an extractive and often exploitative industry (Ho, 2009; Shaxson, 2018). Guided by the psycho-geography of Debord (1955), the analysis explored the entwined spatial and social relations of finance. As a deliberately open-ended endeavour, this was to focus on the movements of drift that flow through the urban and cultural form, feeling the rhythms of movement and how this shapes the emotions and behaviour of individuals (Debord, 1955). In this vein, and encased in a cheap suit, my presence slipped into rhythms around me as I hovered and watched; hovering around City cafes, bars, lobbies of premium firms and public spaces and, all the time, watching the myriad of quotidian social interactions taking place before me. Supporting this analysis were 28 interviews with brokers, traders and investment bankers to examine the descriptions, explanations and evaluations that are not amenable to observation, including personal background, work trajectories, market skills (e.g. managing risk, negotiating failure), environmental pressures, sacrifice, well-being and social impact.

While it is important to acknowledge the multiple and competing institutions, occupations and roles form the fragmented tapestry of finance, for the purposes of this article the focus is not on the inner differences but the broader contours of power and how to use them to shape an ethnographic examination of an elite cultural space. After all, as Archer and Souleles (2021: 197) argue, ethnographers need to “revise how they see power and its exercise”, which, in this context, relates to looking beyond the myriad of internal boundaries and inner-differences and, instead, bring to light how a relational approach can engender a generalisable set of strategies that can be used to widen ethnographic research into sites of finance and power. This is to foreground the City as a cultural ecosystem, containing whole organisational and occupational lifeworlds. How future researchers approach this space and the questions they bring will vary and differ, but the hope is that a relational approach to the field will provide methodological mapping to aid much needed ethnographic examinations of finance.

Fields not places: Citizenship and belonging

Beginning with fields not places is to prioritise a relational ethnographic analysis that maps out the complex dynamics of social space to obtain a greater understanding of the ‘totality’ of social interaction (Desmond, 2014). This is to think about the way the City of London, as a field of finance, brings together interlocking systems of organisational and individual exchange, channelled through its material, technological and social tapestry. In ethnography, field-based approaches have been extensively considered as a way of moving from conventional, single-site locations to more iterative tracings of global systems of capitalist world systems that cut through dichotomies of local and global to trace the putative connections – and movement through – a global system of knowledge, production and exchange (Burawoy et al., 2000; Marcus, 1995; Tsing, 2005). For example, in her ethnography of global connection, Tsing (2005: 4) explains:

Capitalism only spreads as producers, distributers, and consumers strive to universalize categories of capital, money, and commodity fetishism. Such strivings make possible globe-crossing capital and commodity chains. Yet these chains are made up of uneven and awkward links. The cultural specificity of capitalist forms arises from the necessity of bringing capitalist universals into action through worldly encounters.

By tracing the iterative network of field relations that flow through capitalist production and impinge upon practical mobilisations of experience, it is possible to follow the symbiotic relationship between individual life-worlds and the structuring relations of global systems. Working through such networks, ethnographers can move out from single sites of interaction to examine the global circulation of meaning, object and identities in diffuse time and space (Marcus, 1995: 96). Such an approach deprioritises the need for access to any individual organisation and brings about a critical focus on the system of operations that flow through space, creating a “bird’s eye view” (Bourdieu, 2010: 165) of the internal systems and processes active within – and which sustain – the field of finance.

Rather than remaining limited by the question of how to get behind the material relations of power, field analysis prioritises a focus on what to study in terms of the system of interconnected relations that both guide and shape everyday life (Desmond, 2014). The question of what to study establishes a broader view of finance and the City of London, approaching it as a fragmented cultural ecosystem surrounded by a curated spatial topography of power and dominance that has always been concerned with the propagation of certain truths (Spencer, 2016). This is to examine how the multitudinous groups that flow across the financial landscape, interacting with technological systems of communication and exchange, come together and [re]produce a dynamic system of financial market practice. In other words, rather than struggling to access the gaps of power, a field analysis can reveal the contours of structured power that is woven into the physical financial landscape as well as the fine-tune individual social interactions within.

Whereas field-based ethnographies have tended to function to work outwards, touching upon the global network of relations that shape contemporary capitalist experience, in the context of elite fields, the approach can work inwards to create a relational view of the fragmented and all too closed cultural field of finance. Able to connect and situate the material and architectural form of the City within a broader matrix of field relations, we can begin to understand how the intergenerational and ever-evolving tapestry of finance gives shape and form to the attitudes of those who coalesce within this space. This is to recognise that the topographical landscape stands simultaneously as a material manifestation of financial dominance and a symbolic marker of codified expression, transmitting sensibilities of identity, belonging and cohesion and giving cultural legitimisation to the articulated power of market prominence. For example, meeting George, a junior trader in his late twenties, one December evening, we talk as we walk through the Christmas lit streets of Lime Street. Winding our way through the City’s tightly wound lanes and towering skyscrapers, George gesticulates towards the skyline and comments:

You have to imagine what it feels like. It is a privilege to step out of your office and to see this (at this point George gestures up to the external cladding of the Lloyds’ Building). Each morning I wake up and get ready, put on my suit and I began to get that rush. That feeling, you know. Then when I come up from the Tube, I see this (gesturing again). I have to remind myself; this is where the action is, it is where I want to be, it is where the money is made.

Carried in George’s sentiments is an axis of belonging, one which connects personal appearance and the suited uniform of finance with the unfolding tapestry of wealth the surrounds us both. George describes both a strong bond of connection and identity; two properties that eluded me and marked me as an outsider. The function of this material environment is to produce endlessly adaptable subjects, such as George, who align themselves, body and soul, with the sense of power, wealth and exclusion emitted from the surrounding architectural dominance (Spencer, 2016). Afterall, these are the individuals, unlike myself, who have free access to the inner layers, who pass the endlessly revolving doors to the trading floor while I wait on the streets outside.

Focusing inwards, a relational reading of the material and architectural contours of finance is to integrate the felt logic of experience with the power and ubiquity of the market mechanism (Wacquant and Bourdieu, 1993). Feeling the rhythms, flow and movements shaped by the material form of finance helps reveal the integrated contours of, what Sack (1993: 326) calls, guest, stranger and citizen. A relational view of the field of finance reveals the distinctive set of personal dispositions that are conducive to the smooth operation of financial production. To pass through the slick and reinforced security that encloses financial architecture is to instil a sense of belonging, or citizenship, amongst its members. Being in the City, mapped onto a field of relations, is to feel the rhythms, motions and formations of identity creation that is elicited by space. A focus on the topographical and spatial contours of the City, in other words, helps trace how this broader field of power comes together to create a material environment that generates a social selective sorting of people and practices within the spatial framework of the City of London.

Boundaries, not bounded groups: Demarcations of inclusion and exclusion

A relational examination of the field begins to highlight integrated systems of belonging as well as the symbolic and material demarcation of inclusion and exclusion. By tracing the mechanisms of exclusion, as Lamont and Molnar (2002) argue, a study of boundaries holds the power to shed new light on the strong axis of creation and the force of relations that come to create an elite and demarcated sense of being. Within boundary work, the driving question relates to how symbolic resources create, maintain and contest a unified ‘way of being’ as individuals and groups differentiate themselves from others by drawing on criteria of community and shared belonging (Bourdieu, 2010; Lamont and Molnar, 2002). In turn, the ability to draw and enforce a definable boundary leads to a distinct formation of social identity, knowledge and spatial community that holds the power to include and exclude in equal measure. Linking social space to physical space and the symbolic to the material, an analysis of boundaries retains a close link to fields and helps foster a deeper understanding of the processes of identity creation.

While Bourdieu largely overlooked conceptualising the boundary as a unit of analysis, viewing any effort to stem from a ‘positivist vision’ that riles against the ‘relational’ view of the social world (Swartz, 1997), boundaries are, themselves, relational constructs that emerge out of spatial, material and symbolic systems of struggle. As Desmond (2014: 551) argues, a relational view of boundaries goes beyond “fixed entities” and helps give a deeper sense of cohesion within a common framework of truth, justice and morality. The maintenance of the boundary becomes a tool through which individuals and groups come to agree upon a definition of self, purpose and belonging (Lamont and Molnar, 2002). The boundary, therefore, is a powerful imaginary. For the ethnographer, the task becomes one of tracing the field’s force of relations by probing and pressing the edge of its boundary. It is about testing the literal and symbolic borders that give meaning to formations of social experience and identity formation that are contained within – an ethnography of exclusion.

This relates to tracing and feeling the symbolic and geographical line of demarcation that separates the City from its surrounds. The power to define and demarcate is a strong hallmark of powerful social fields that, in turn, establishes a dominant system of knowledge and creates an imaginary through which financial life is interpreted. In spatial terms, the City’s tightly bounded clutch of high-rise buildings stand as an isolated physical and cultural arena, distinct and separated from the London that surrounds it. Driven purely by the rhythms and demands of the financial markets, the City becomes, what the late Tony Benn called, an “offshore island moored in the Thames” (Hansard, 2000). More than just geographic, the ability to construct and maintain a field’s boundary resonates by creating a symbolic bifurcation of experience and identity creation. Within the City’s boundary, the colour and vibrance of London fades into a monochrome of white and grey: white men and grey suits. Controlled by the City Corporation, which predates the Magna Carta, the City is a world apart politically, culturally and economically.

The power to define brings an ability to translate symbols of distinction into a closure that the social and spatial distance between the City’s sleek exclusivity from the enduring deprivation and inequality found throughout neighbouring Hackney and Tower Hamlets. As Lamont and Molnar (2002) argue, expressing a physical boundary relates back to the maintenance of the field, that provides the social audience with concrete and meaningful experiences of place and belonging. Within this geographic boundary sits a tight mapping of force relations that surrounds each financial institution. Again, at street level, suited bodies pour in and out of the revolving doors that demarcate a further, institutionally driven, separation of knowledge and belonging. Dressed in my £70 Marks and Spencer’s suit (a poor approximation of ‘mirroring’ and forever a marker of my own exclusion), my strategy was to explore how far my presence would be tolerated before feeling the (forceful) mechanisms of exclusion. Always at different stages, but without exception, my outsider status would be noticed. A bouncer dressed as a concierge would step forward with the sole aim of turning my direction of purpose around, no questions asked. Neatly dressed and in fitting with the opulence of their surroundings, these bouncers were part of the tight network of surveillance that control the perimeters of finance. Leading to a question of the function of control, the continuing aesthetic of security that surrounds these financial institutions marks the fortification of knowledge rather than any actual monetary capital itself. The fortification of the boundary, in this manner, draws attention to the social systems of symbolic dominance that function to establish and maintain and internal financial order.

The boundary, here, is not just a material manifestation of control but has been turned into a culture system of exclusion. It is an experience that helps give meaning to the experiential disconnection of the City of London, as an enclave of financial wealth from broader society. More than just separating two worlds, creating a distinction between inside and outside, the material organisation of space begins to shape and give form to the transmission of knowledge, inclusion and, with it, the rules of entry (Bourdieu and Passeron, 1977). In other words, the maintenance of the field’s boundary reveals the contours of disconnection and dislocation: a set of deeply felt force relations that legitimise the transmission of specialist knowledge systems.

Processes, not processed people: Shared embodied dispositions of speed, sharpness and honour

If the study of fields and boundaries are about examining the geometric position of a system of relations, then a focus on processes sheds new light on the movements and interactions rooted within. As Desmond (2014: 566) argues, this is to approach the object of ethnographic study as a social system of sequenced and connected events that link the flow through material, technological and social contours of interaction. In other words, processes work beyond the carefully shielded life-worlds of specific institutional settings or individual market actors and, instead, reveal the unfolding relations and ongoing processes that give a deeper sense of finance as a dynamic world in motion. After all, financial markets are, ultimately, social and technological fields held together by the bounding of material technologies and groupings of financial actors (MacKenzie, 2004; Sassen, 2005). Working within the spatial and technological dynamics of the City of London, the rhythms of financial interaction give new meaning to the phenomenological contours of experience in which individuals cognitively and practically adapt to the demands and movements within the financial market. This is a process in which individuals and groups bring into being a distinct performative quality to finance work, reinforcing a common sense of honour, prestige and demarcation of privilege based upon and reinforced by a shared sense of being.

As we have already come to understand, the financial markets do not exist in a single bounded setting but are active through a multitude of relations and coordinated positions within a given field. While traders, brokers and investment bankers each have their own experience in contributing to the smooth running of a coherent and ideologically driven financial marketplace, so do the individuals in hi-vis jackets and hard hats figuratively and literally building the City of London’s future landscape, or the barista working in a Cannon Street café who creates an alternate environment of market interaction and performance. Marking this distinction is not to minimise the importance of market facing occupational roles, but it is to emphasise the significance of the financial markets as an ongoing and evolving process that flows through multiple institutions and occupations. The ethnographer cannot be expected to trace each and every relation, but it does delimit finance from internal arenas of tight secrecy and control, such as trading floors. Loosening the focus from any singular bounded occupational group and, instead, piecing together the network of market interaction through a range of industry positions not only makes ethnographic analysis of powerful cultural spaces more feasible but also more effective. Through ‘informed insiders’, what can emerge is a wealth of understanding that allows for a critical evaluation of the connections between a range of positions as experienced by brokers, traders, investment bankers, sales managers, board representatives and support personnel. This allows finance to be viewed as a cultural ecosystem with a focus on how these multitudinous groups come together to (re)produce a dynamic system of market practice within the cultural environment of the City of London.

Rather than struggling with the totality of finance, an examination of processes traces the relations shared between units and examining the unfolding processes of shared action that come together to create a coherent market system (Desmond, 2014; Marcus, 2013). The framework of the market and the individual become, here, entwined as a cohesive whole, reproducing the expected values and demands of the field, to engender a socially and culturally determined collective of values and experiences. After all, to feel is to become at one with the market and to have a deep understanding of its temporal and spatial movements that flow in and out of the body’s rhythms:

As the market falls you need to know when to get off the escalator. It is not always that simple, you may be hanging on to a poor deal, waiting and anticipating the market to pick up. But each day your stock is literally falling. It is a little bit like death by a thousand cuts. After a while it becomes natural, second nature, like breathing. You feel the market, anticipate its movements, learn when to hold tight and when to get off.

Here, Marcus, a senior manager in the metal markets, describes with no small amount of predation the need to learn, feel and internalise the movements of finance. Amounting to a system of rhythms and flows of the financial marketplace, there comes a felt conception of the relationship between a conscious body and the context in which it is lived within a matrix of material and spatial interaction (Shilling, 2018; Simpson, 2019). Through these processes and the descriptions of finance work as deeply experiential, the structures and rule systems that give a sense of order and coherence to finance begin to emerge. For Marcus, this order hangs on an inherent ability to ‘feel the market’ as a sense of rooted connection rooted within is very being.

As a system of being, finance workers compete to internalise the infinite possibilities of ideological market potential within the limited organ of the body. Here, the struggle becomes not just one of survival, where slowness is punished by losses (Zaloom, 2006), but a mode of cognitive and corporeal adaption in which the self and the financial markets become one. To feel the market, therefore, is about a practical and cognitive basis of alignment as it is to do with a phenomenology that seeks the heart of experience itself. This is to trace the unity between the minds, bodies and technological processes that flow through the financial markets and examine how, in the manner of Bourdieu (1996), individuals mark themselves as different and ennobled. By upholding the integrity of the ideological market system through their shared actions and beliefs, individuals engage in mutually recognised performative modes characterised by speed, sharpness and collective honour (Simpson, 2018, 2019). These are reflexive processes of body and mind that facilitate movement through an increasingly accelerated financial landscape, through which finance workers equip themselves for the competitive and technologically accelerated rigours of market life. In doing so, individual finance workers come together, through a matrix of felt and performative relations, to uphold the frictionless ideal of the dominant and ideological market experience.

Cultural conflict, not group culture: Competition and ‘survivability’

The study of cultural conflict weaves through the consolation of a shared practices, values and assumptions to reveal the points of, what Desmond (2014: 568) calls, “collision”. The processes of finance may function to reveal the unifying strategies relating to a performative and embodied commitment to speed, intelligence and discipline. Yet, at the same time, these performative motions that exist within finance work only gain meaning within a broader cultural trial of competition. In other words, the financial marketplace exists as a system of open competition with each individual and organisation pitted against one another on a simultaneous local and global scale. Through Bourdieu (1977: 8), we can begin to see competition as a ‘world making power’, which works upon the body to instil a ‘practical truth’ and a unification of rules, compliance and decision-making through conflict.

The focus of constant competition and its logic frames a never-ending struggle of survival and supremacy that engenders a visceral sense of anomic individualism and vulnerability. At the same time, the trial of competition distils the complexities, nuances and contradictions of financial practice to survivability. Surrounded by the chaos of market performance, there is a need to be quick, disciplined and smart enough to succeed in what is presented as a dirty battle for survival. The trial for finance workers becomes one of internalising rapid fluctuations of market movement and its infinite demands within the limited cognitive and corporeal capacity of the self. Creating an ontological tension, the only sense of ‘truth’ becomes competition. Inherent conflict that competition endows establishes a revered system of ‘market as truth’ or, what Bourdieu (1998) calls, a cultural doxa. Here, competition’s trial establishes a cultural consciousness of what is taken for granted and leads to the development of disciplining techniques that individuals and groups draw upon to separate the relentless demands of finance from personal concerns of desire and responsibility.

Finance’s performative structures are defined by an ability to negotiate the trial and constant competition, master the techniques of speed and intelligence required for participation, and overcome the risks of failure. The successful are able to internalise the inherent vulnerability and work to exploit the weakness of others and, in turn, come to be selected through the marker of superiority and survival (Lépinay, 2011; Zaloom, 2006). The dangers and the pitfalls of financial life must be embraced, internalised and presented as a product of unity that comes with life ‘on the edge’. In turn, weakness and vulnerability are traits to be exploited and punished by the zero-sum game of individualistic competition. The outcome is a Darwinist logic of survival that exists as a crude facsimile for ability. For example, Harriet a sales manager in the foreign exchange markets, explains to me to ‘correcting’ influence of market competition:

One of the good things about working in a bank is that I am surrounded by very intelligent people all day and […] the people who do wing it are the people who have been weeded out.

Sharing a similar sentiment expressing the power and function of competition, Robin, a broker in the money markets, explains how:

In money markets you can’t have this namby-pamby attitude. People get quick at it and then you get confidence. There is a certain amount of quickness in the City, fast language and conviction. When everyone is smooth and everyone knows and they can trust each other, there are quality individuals and then you get this super-subset of individuals that are very, very sharp, very quick, honour each other with a very strong bond.

For both Harriet and Robin, the world making power of competition lends a veneer of ‘the natural’ to the ideological order of finance where the ‘weak’ are punished through losses and the ‘strong’ are rewarded through profit reputation and prestige. Conflict, therefore, excludes as well as unifies. What remains crucial is the way that conflict carries the threat of expulsion and compels individuals and groups to invest themselves completely and wholeheartedly in the unfolding system of finance. With the base logic being ‘survivability’, those who are granted access to participate in the trial of competition, that is to say, the citizens of the City, construct themselves as inherently part of the ‘strong’ and are marked by their ability to endure and survive the rigours of financial life.

Competition, in this context, constructs a dominant social identity and establishes a marker of difference that, in turn, enshrines an ‘elective elite’ who have proven themselves to be stronger, more resilient and smarter than those around them. The study of cultural conflict, therefore, gives a vision to the internal struggles that, within the field of finance, are imprisoned the base logic of survival as well as revealing the ways in which opposition coalesces to create a sense of unity. Through conflict, we can gain access to the uniformity of cultural expectation and performance, creating a circle of ‘likeminded insiders’ who embody the market through their very thoughts and actions.

Conclusion

This article emphasises the importance of employing a relational ethnography to shed new light on cultures of power and privilege: a cultural space that all too often sits beyond the ethnographic – if not sociological – gaze. While there has been gathering momentum amongst sociologists and anthropologists to reverse the ethnographic imbalance, thus shedding new light on the construction, maintenance and exercise of power, this article presents a generalisable account to guide and aid future ethnographic insight and research that challenges the grip of power within elite cultural fields. After all, it cannot be assumed that traditional ethnographic methodologies can be readily reversed (Gusterson, 1997; Ortner, 2010; Souleles, 2021). By applying Desmond’s (2014: 547) four foci of relational ethnographic inquiry, fields, boundaries, processes and cultural conflict, this article develops a critical system of analysis that, drawing on Souleles (2021), challenges the invisibilised and hegemonic reproduction of power by ethnographically examining the ‘lived experiences’ of hard-to-reach social fields. A relational ethnography turns attention towards the processes and configurations of power relations that run through the interconnected matrix of social relations, prioritising processes that sustain cultural interaction. Faced with very real, objective force relations that, too often, prevent ethnographic access, the would-be ethnographer can be forgiven for erring towards an approach that examines how to overcome such limits and “get behind” the “coercive harmony” of power (Nader, 1972, 1997). Whereas the persistent lure of ‘insider knowledge’ only renders visible its impossibility, a relational approach opens new possibilities by asking the researcher to focus on what – not how – to study, thus bringing into view the sustaining processes of power that can be, in turn, ethnographically explored.

Adapting Desmond’s relational approach to the ethnographic study of power that focuses ‘inwards’, and drawing on the context of the City of London’s field of finance, this article establishes a new pathway to guide and assure future researchers. Firstly, fields, not places, identify how social relations within a spatial metaphor allow a sensory vision of social experience within a given setting. Here, a focus on the spatial topography reveals the sensory experiences that reverberate and run through the contours of the City’s towering edifices, transmitting a prescribed system of knowledge and a powerful sense of citizenship and belonging. Secondly, boundaries, not bounded groups, is to push against the objective boundaries of experience to examine the shared relationship between the demarcation of the field and a formation of social identity, knowledge and community – one which engenders demarcations of inclusion, exclusion and narratives of citizenship. Thirdly, processes, not processed people, looks beyond any single bounded setting, be it organisational or occupational, to emphasise the shared understandings and common assumptions that flow through systems of financial exchange. Engendering a vision of the City as a cultural ecosystem gives a sensory understanding of the rhythms of finance and, from my study, how individuals mark themselves as ‘different’, or ‘ennobled’, by an ability to internalise performative market relations through dispositions of speed, sharpness and honour. Finally, cultural conflict, not group culture, prioritises the fission created by the enduring logic of finance – competition. As a ‘world making power’, competition and notions of ‘survivability’ uphold an ideological market order through an axis of anomic individualism, which compels individuals and institutions alike to invest wholly in its trial.

Together, these foci establish a redrawn focus of ethnographic observation to help construct an experiential and ‘on-the-ground’ vision of powerful cultural fields by operating through its relational contours of practice, expectation and knowledge communication. The focus on the City as a cultural field reflects, not a totalising entity, but rather a fragmented and multi-faceted ethnoscape in which are a myriad of complex, overlapping and disjunctive financial relations. Here, the task of the ethnographer is to give ontological primacy to the configuration of relations that cannot be limited to groups or places, but flow through and across the multiple fields and which connect observable situations to global exchange networks and embedded historical relations (Appadurai, 1990; Desmond, 2014; Hart and Ortiz, 2014). In other words, rather than struggling to access the gaps of power, a relational analysis can reveal the contours of structured power that is woven into the physical financial landscape and direct critical inquiry that responds to the question in hand. Tracing the methodological contours of possibility, the importance of this article is to present an adaptive strategy to aid future inquiry. After all, the importance of developing ethnographies of power is as urgent as it is prescient. As Archer and Souleles (2021) explain, power relationships alter how we, as ethnographers and social scientists, relate with the field, yet we retain an academic and moral responsibility to analyse, explain and deconstruct the worlds that the powerful create. By adopting a relational orientation, this article contributes to how we can approach this problem by providing a methodological strategy that works beyond the parameters of ‘luck’ and which can be used in the study of powerful cultural fields, thereby forming the basis for future research.