Accounting in the margin: Financial ecologies in between big and small data

Abstract:

Social studies of finance can be split in two types: studies that have paid attention to “market devices” (such as scorings and credit cards) enacted by financial firms and studies that analyze new practices and modes of “ordinary calculation” developed by consumers of financial services around the world. This article is part of a broader project that aims at opening a different path that locates social studies of domestic finances at the intersection where both kinds of calculation - the big data of market devices and the small data of ordinary financial practices- can be simultaneously observed. More specifically, this article discusses some of the methodological challenges faced from this new position, particularly, how we used some of the traces left by big data and how we dealt with an surprising “commercial circuit” founded in our material.

Keywords:
Financial ecologies; Social studies of finance; Credit card; Chile; Social research methods