Jonathan Hearn 
Salvage ethnography in the financial sector 
The path to economic crisis in Scotland

This book is based on ethnographic research from 2001-2, during Bank of Scotland’s first year of merger with Halifax to form HBOS. The research is revisited from the present perspective in the wake of the global banking and financial crisis that undermined HBOS in 2008. This historical perspective on the ethnographic data is used to explore: people’s responses to the pressures of heightened competition and organisational change; mutual and sometimes antagonistic perceptions of Scottish and English identities across the two merged banks; conflicting evaluations of national and organisational cultures; and the challenges of integrating ethnographic and historical perspectives in a single study. As an historical ethnography it ‘salvages’ a disappearing culture of Scottish and UK banking, disintegrated by neoliberal processes.

Table of Content

Series editor’s foreword
1. Introduction: ethnography, history and the vagaries of research
2. History: from Bank of Scotland’s origins to HBOS and crisis
3. Theory: explaining financial crisis and conceptualising capitalism
4. Culture: nations, banks and the organisation of power and social life
5. Change: discourses of agency and progress in organisational change
6. Identity: struggles with personhood, nationhood and professional virtue
7. Comparison: doing ethnography and thinking comparatively
8. Conclusion
Epilogue
References

About the author

Alexander Smith is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Huddersfield