Hedged Out

Inequality and Insecurity on Wall Street

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Pub Date 25 Jan 2022 | Archive Date 10 Apr 2022

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Description

A former hedge fund worker takes an ethnographic approach to Wall Street to expose who wins, who loses, and why inequality endures.
 
Who do you think of when you imagine a hedge fund manager? A greedy fraudster, a visionary entrepreneur, a wolf of Wall Street? These tropes capture the public imagination of a successful hedge fund manager. But behind the designer suits, helicopter commutes, and illicit pursuits are the everyday stories of people who work in the hedge fund industry—many of whom don’t realize they fall within the 1 percent that drives the divide between the richest and the rest. With Hedged Out, sociologist and former hedge fund analyst Megan Tobias Neely gives readers an outsider’s insider perspective on Wall Street and its enduring culture of inequality.
 
Hedged Out dives into the upper echelons of Wall Street, where elite white masculinity is the standard measure for the capacity to manage risk and insecurity. Facing an unpredictable and risky stock market, hedge fund workers protect their interests by working long hours and building tight-knit networks with people who look and behave like them. Using ethnographic vignettes and her own industry experience, Neely showcases the voices of managers and other workers to illustrate how this industry of politically mobilized elites excludes people on the basis of race, class, and gender. Neely shows how this system of elite power and privilege not only sustains itself but builds over time as the beneficiaries concentrate their resources. Hedged Out explains why the hedge fund industry generates extreme wealth, why mostly white men benefit, and why reforming Wall Street will create a more equal society.
A former hedge fund worker takes an ethnographic approach to Wall Street to expose who wins, who loses, and why inequality endures.
 
Who do you think of when you imagine a hedge fund manager? A...

Advance Praise

"Megan Tobias Neely uses rigorous social science and clear prose to pull back the curtain on the hedge fund industry. The result is a beautiful explanation of the intertwining of power and wealth with whiteness and masculinity. Neely forces us to grapple with the ugliness of today's inequality, all the while offering us hope by suggesting pathways to transformation."—Shamus R. Khan, Professor of Sociology and American Studies, Princeton University, and author of Privilege: The Making of an Adolescent Elite at St. Paul's School

"Hedged Out is the first scholarly book to provide an in-depth view of the social world of hedge funds, with cutting edge interview and ethnographic data. The book exposes the elitist counterculture and the boundaries within hedge funds that explain why women and racial minorities are often left out of a highly lucrative and powerful industry. This engaging work is ambitious in scope, and it is a page turner that will appeal to a wide audience."—Kimberly Kay Hoang, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago, and author of Dealing in Desire

"Megan Tobias Neely uses rigorous social science and clear prose to pull back the curtain on the hedge fund industry. The result is a beautiful explanation of the intertwining of power and wealth...


Available Editions

EDITION Other Format
ISBN 9780520307704
PRICE $28.95 (USD)
PAGES 336

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