Governing individuals’ imaginaries and conduct in personal finance: The mobilization of emotions in financial education

Abstract

Today’s regime of financialized capitalism requires individuals to engage with financial products and services to ensure their financial security and welfare. Within this regime, institutional actors formulate and communicate imaginaries of the future that prompt individuals to embrace particular financial logics, understandings, and practices in managing their personal finance. Financial literacy and education is an important institutional field where such imaginaries are formulated and communicated to the public. This article examines the notions and themes articulated in programs of financial education currently conducted by state and non-state organizations in Israel, considering the ways in which proper conduct in key financial activities (debt and credit, saving and investment, and insurance) is defined, explained, and justified. We argue that, replete with explicit and implicit references to emotions and emotional states associated with practices of everyday finance, these programs mobilize them to govern individuals’ imaginaries of the future and financial conduct according to the model of the desired responsible financial subject. This emotional dimension represents a significant component in the cultural political economy of the constitution of financial subjectivities and the culture of financialization, that naturalizes the behavioral and dispositional requirements and demands that everyday finance poses to the general public.