Section: People
Research Student Profiles
Financial Services Industry and Social Structure: A Comparative Study
My Ph.D. project aims to study the operative and institutional mechanisms that integrate financial organizations to the broader social structure. The process of recruiting, socialising and promoting core staff members in the firms of financial services industry are central aspects for their social reproduction, and the idea is to see which social mechanisms and broader social patters linked to social stratification, networks and social capital formation play a role in these processes a,d how do they do.
Therefore, in this research I will try to answer the following questions: What are the social mechanisms (formal and informal) through which financial services firms recruit and integrate their staff?, How do these mechanisms contribute to reproducing their institutional patterns?, and, How do these social mechanisms integrate financial services firms into the broader structures of society?
For this purpose I will conduct a comparative study, researching the trajectories of core financial workers in two very different countries: the UK and Chile. A mix of qualitative and quantitative methods will be employed.
Supervisor
Professor Donald MacKenzie
Education
Licentiate and Professional Title of Sociologist, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile)
Msc in Sociology, Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile)
Teaching Experience
University of Valparaiso, Chile: Lecturer of "Economic Sociology" 2006-2009
University Alberto Hurtado, Chile: Lecturer of "Logic of Social Research", 2007
Conferences
XXV Congress of the Latin America Sociology Association (ALAS for its initials in Spanish), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil (August 2005). Presentations: “The Cultural Dimension of Chilean Television” and “Democracy, Legitimacy and Communication in Latin America” (Spanish).
XXVI Congress of the Latin America Sociology Association (ALAS for its initials in Spanish), Universidad de Guadalajara, Guadalajara, Mexico (August 2007). Presentation: “The Role of Elite Schools in the Reproduction of the Social Structure” (Spanish).
“Niklas Luhmann, Ten Years After : The Challenge of observing a complex society” (Congress organized by the Social Sciences faculties of the Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Universidad de Chile and Universidad Catolica to commemorate the ten years since the death of Niklas Luhmann), Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile (October 2008). Presentation: “System Theory and Economic Sociology” (Spanish).
Pre-ALAS Chile Congress, Universidad de Chile, Santiago de Chile (November 2008). Presentation: “Sociology of Markets in Latin America: A Research Agenda based in the case of Chile” (Spanish).
“Embeddedness and Complexity in the Financial Services Industry at the Workshop on Embeddedness and Embedding organized by the Polish Sociological Association the University of Gdańsk and the Kashubian Institute at Gdansk, Poland, 14-15 May 2012
“Financial services and social structures: Challenges and limitations of a comparative study” at the Conference Complex Gaze at a Complex World: Challenges of Comparison in Social Research, organized by the Centre of Independent Research, Laboratorioum Russian Review of Social Research and the European University at Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Russia, 25-27 May 2012
Publications
“Sociologia Economica y Teoria de Sistemas” (“Economic Sociology and Systems Theory”) in the book “Niklas Luhmann y el Legado Universalista de su Teoria: Aportes para el analisis de la Complejidad Social Contemporanea” (“Niklas Luhmann and the Universalistic Legacy of his Theory: Contributions to the Analysis of Contemporary Social Complexity”), Published by RIL Editores and edited by Aldo Mascareno, Anahi Urquiza and Hugo Cadenas.
LanguagesSpanish, English, German
This page was published on 18 January 2013