Constructing the retail investor : performativity and power in the market for investment services

Abstract

This paper examines retail investment as a practice performed by marketing knowledge and highlights the power effects of market devices. Using a qualitative study of retail investors in the United Kingdom, it considers the devices and discourses that structure investment behaviour. It draws attention to parallels between the precepts of the market studies programme and the Foucauldian literature of governance technologies in neo-liberal capitalism. Market devices and heterodox ways of understanding the financial market constitute investors as docile consumers of investment services. Self-discipline and confession are normalising technologies that help investors cope with difficulties and losses in the market.