Financial Literacy, Financialisation and Neo-liberalism

This paper reviews recent arguments put forward by international and national agencies committed to the advancement of financial education programmes. It shows the extent to which this commitment is symptomatic of financialised contemporary capitalist societies that have promoted the steady integration of individuals and households into financial markets. It argues that, in the aftermath of the crisis, financial education is part and parcel of a wider strategy to further promote the deepening of finance into more areas of economic and social life. Present day welfare state reforms require individuals to be increasingly responsible for their future financial security through expanding demand for financial products and services that are to supplement or replace public provision. Financial education agenda is instrumental to this endeavour, exposing the dominance of neo-liberal ideology with its emphasis on the promotion of the self-reliant individual who provides for herself in the market and is willing to accept the responsibility for the consequences of her actions. This construed new financial subject is critical to legitimatise the expansion of markets in domains where collective forms of provision prevailed. Financial education is thus an important element in the analysis of the material culture of financialisation through its effects on the meanings of financialisation and how these interact with experiences of financialisation, both of its target population as well as of all those subject to its discourses.