ABSTRACT

This article considers the conceptual role that contingency plays in class-based inequality, by examining financial insecurity in the UK following the 2008 financial crisis, austerity, and the COVID-19 pandemic. Drawing on Althusser’s aleatory materialism, I counter postmodern and poststructuralist ideas of contingency as a universally disruptive challenge to power and stratification, showing instead how a pervasive sense of uncertainty drives working households into debt and diminishes savings, creating ongoing financial strain or poverty. Using Althusser’s concept of the ‘encounter’, I note how the emergence of consumer finance is historically contingent, but has become normalized in the wage relation. Financial risk, with its potential to yield high rewards for institutional investors and financial firms trading stocks, securities, and assets, amplifies uncertainty that working households face in socially reproducing themselves, because it forces those who draw an income as their main source of wealth to manage the potential risk of loss on an untradeable commodity. The encounter between financial institutions and working households is thus unevenly weighted, with precarious households unable to offload risk in unpredictable times. I connect this aleatory reading of inequality with Althusser’s earlier work on contradiction and overdetermination, to understand the implications of stratification on crisis and change.

摘要

本文通过研究 2008 年金融危机、紧缩政策和 COVID-19 大流行后英国的金融不安全状况，探讨了意外事件在基于阶级的不平等中所扮演的概念性角色。借鉴阿尔都塞的偶然唯物主义，我反驳了后现代和后结构主义关于偶然性的观点，认为它是对权力和分层的普遍破坏性挑战，相反，我展示了普遍存在的不确定性如何导致工薪家庭陷入债务并减少储蓄，造成持续的财务压力或贫困。运用阿尔都塞的“相遇”概念，我注意到消费金融的出现在历史上是偶然的，但在工资关系中已经变得正常化。金融风险有可能为交易股票、证券和资产的机构投资者和金融公司带来高额回报，放大了工薪家庭在社会再生产方面面临的不确定性，因为它迫使那些以收入作为主要财富来源的人来管理不可贸易商品的潜在损失风险。因此，金融机构和工薪家庭之间的权重不均，不稳定的家庭无法在不可预测的时期摆脱风险。我将这种对不平等的偶然解读与阿尔都塞早期关于矛盾和过度决定的著作联系起来，以理解分层对危机和变革的影响。因此，金融机构和工薪家庭之间的权重不均，不稳定的家庭无法在不可预测的时期摆脱风险。我将这种对不平等的偶然解读与阿尔都塞早期关于矛盾和过度决定的著作联系起来，以理解分层对危机和变革的影响。因此，金融机构和工薪家庭之间的权重不均，不稳定的家庭无法在不可预测的时期摆脱风险。我将这种对不平等的偶然解读与阿尔都塞早期关于矛盾和过度决定的著作联系起来，以理解分层对危机和变革的影响。