Abstract

Sociology is looking for new theoretical and analytucal tools to study the financialization of the world economy and its social consequences. The article focuses on two much debated aspects: a) the traders activity, based on expert knowledge and high technology skills; b) the personal finance, regarding how people manage money, credits and debts, interacting with fanancial intermediates. The aim is to disentangle the practices and the institutionalised processes regulating money exchanges: in this way it is possible to conceotualise the finance world as social system characterized by power differentials as effects of the financial capital circulation.