A reading of 'Culture Hacking' and the importance of activist anthropology

Poppy Harris

Scott, B., (2013), The Heretics Guide to Global Finance, ch 3: 'Culture Hacking'

The third chapter of Scott’s book eschews the technical side of finance to offer us a look into the more sociological aspect of the sector, seeking to dispel some common misconceptions and misunderstandings of, for example, the personalities of bankers.The result is a multi-layered phenomenon that is not as clear-cut as the view of the greedy, angry and irresponsible banker would have us believe. Underpinning his argument is the idea that the sector cannot move towards democratic accountability without a sure knowledge of how it works. This can be achieved through what he coins ‘culture hacking’. 

He begins the chapter by outlining that the financial sector is not merely concerned with money, physical or otherwise. Rather, the system is inherently built around, and thus intrinsically supported by, the idea of information. Indeed, "people make investment decisions based on information” (91). Information keeps money flowing, and money flowing results in an expanding pool of information. A nice analogy that Scott uses is that the financial market is akin to a “huge social internet, constituted by information flows and webs of knowledge”. But if this is so, how does one go about accessing this information? It is not enough to simply ‘tap in’ to these webs of knowledge as one might do with the World Wide Web. Indeed, propping up this network of information is the fundamental notion of trust. 

‘Trust’ is an encompassing theme in heterodox-economics. According to Pettifor (2014), the idea of trust underpins our entire economy. Rather than a commodity subject to the laws of supply and demand, money is a social construct based on the idea of repayment (that is, credit - an individual is credited an amount at the stroke of keys, with the understanding that they will pay amount back over a set time). Money, thus, became the measure of this trust rather than existing above and beyond. This is evident when we consider that money as a physical object existed some years after bartering which, again, was based on the idea of trust. 

So, as trust underpins economic activity, it follows that trust also underpins the information flows that allow for the impetus of the economy to happen. Trust between individuals “hyperlink people to more valuable private [forms of] knowledge”. Indeed, as he points out, it is not difficult to witness these out of office ‘transactions’ occurring: one simply needs to venture to any of the three financial sectors in London to overhear tidbits of information. 

The term ‘culture-hacking’ as used in the title of this chapter is an attempt to go further than merely eavesdropping in on some bankers at a Mayfair cafe. It is to physically infiltrate a system as an object of ‘otherness’, “in a world that would otherwise repel them”. Scott maintains that this is an essential part of what he terms ‘activist anthropology’: where an individual purposefully partakes in something perceived as negative to gain a greater understanding, which he outlines in chapter 2. 

The logic behind this is twofold. Firstly, to articulately and coherently critique something, one needs to have a full understanding of its complex internal intricacies, arguably a problem with many activist groups today since many believe that to get too close to an “imagined” enemy you are buying into the system yourself (or, simply, ’selling out’). Moreover, positioning yourself as an ‘other’, an outsider, serves to solidify and reinforce the insider/outsider dynamic that fuels the financial sector: a lack of understanding leaves an object of inquiry closed to interpretation. The financial sector is something that is seen as intrinsically complex but this complexity aids the sector because non-understanding closes it off to scrutiny. 

This is what Scott is attempting to change. He claims the system can be “cracked” once we move our understandings away both from what we perceive money to be (outlined by Pettifor), but also our understanding of the personalities within finance, and how they are just as integral to the running of the system. Once we allow ourselves to learn, removing our perhaps deep-rooted biases of what we perceive to know, the 'culture', he claims, can be ‘hacked’.