Sociology and Semiotics of Financial Markets

The neo-classical framework ignores the interaction between individuals and is not at all interested in the nature of the relationship that links individuals through the market. However, the market is a place for social integration where the individuals necessarily use their interaction abilities. In other words, the integration depends directly on a rationality that we could call, inspired by Habermas, “communicative”. There exists no market without exchange and no exchange without interaction. The social interaction is the necessary condition to the building and the spatio-temporal organization of a financial market. In this paper, we propose a semiotic metaphor of the financial market where the fundamental value would be the signified of an asset and where its quotation (exchange value) would be the signifier, i.e. the abstract structure that evokes the signified (use value). This semiotic metaphor of the financial market sustains the idea of a flexible interdisciplinary knowledge that would try to interpret the signs and the meaning of a constantly changing financial reality.