Abstract
This article examines Cashflow, a board game that readers of best-seller financial success books play in order to learn the basics of investing and to enhance their financial skills. Cashflow is a fictitious market, in which players buy and sell assets with the ultimate goal of becoming “financially free.” Based on participant observation of clubs in the United States and Argentina, and drawing on the ideas of performativity and governmentality, the article focuses on four topics. First, the role of the game in establishing definitions of what it means to be rich. Second, the development of calculative tools. Third, players’ work on the self, through which they explore what may be fostering or limiting their chances of financial success. Finally, the work done by players to fit the game with reality, which allows the game to be used in different national economic contexts.
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Notes
Books, in particular Rich Dad, Poor Dad, are the usual point of entrance. But there are also players who were dragged to a game by a friend or family member. They may encounter financial self-help through fortuitous roads, but they also find in financial self-help resources the narratives to explain why they are and should be there. They may not think that there is anything wrong with their financial dispositions before knowing about the books and game, but they discover their own financial deficiencies as they start using these resources.
The question of why this book in particular became so popular is not easy to respond. Recent research shows that success of cultural products may not have much to do with the inherent qualities of the product and may be caused by self-fulfilling prophecies and the “Matthew effect” (Salganik and Watts 2008). Kiyosaki’s success can be attributed to an effective branding effort, because his varied products and platforms advertise each other. Readers I interviewed usually recognized that his simple writing to convey complex ideas that shook their basic notions about the economy was the most attractive factor of Kiyosaki’s work.
Networking is one of the mandates of the Rich Dad literature and other self-help books. Readers are told that interacting with people with similar concerns will help them work more actively for their financial success. They also use networking to find financial opportunities or business partners.
All names of participants, organizers, and organizations have been altered to ensure confidentiality.
Since Sonny is involved in several groups, attendants frequently do not know to which club a given session belongs. In the last few months of my research, one of the two main clubs became largely inactive. However, the frequency of games did not change, because Sonny kept organizing games with other clubs or meet-ups.
Argentine games are usually louder, but this is probably not something related to Cashflow itself.
During the two years in which I played Cashflow, I attended games from as many different clubs as I could in New York and Buenos Aires. In New York, there are several clubs formally listed in the Rich Dad’s website, but most of them are inactive, so I ended up attending games from four different groups. I played in games advertised in the groups’ web pages or in meet-up websites. In Buenos Aires, I attended games organized by or through the two main groups (Financial Freedom Argentina and the online forum). In both cities, I played in almost all of the active groups.
Although financial self-help resources largely assume a male audience, there is a growing literature especially targeted towards women. This literature is slowly being translated and published in Argentina, but it is much more extended and established in the United States. See, for example, Kim Kiyosaki (2006), Orman (2007), Bach (2002) and Chatzky (2006).
All cards are seen by all participants, regardless of whose turn it is, and are read out loud.
The game provides fake bills in several denominations, and one player is supposed to be the bank. However, with very few exceptions, bills are replaced by balance sheets to make the game easier and faster.
The classification of “monies” rather than “money” was analyzed by Viviana Zelizer (1994).
This scene is similar to the behavioral experiment usually called “Ultimatum game,” in which people turn down free money just because other experimental subjects are getting more. The Ultimatum game points to other factors that individual maximization of benefit playing a role in people’s economic decisions (Kiser and Bauldry 2005, p. 179). I thank one of the anonymous reviewers of Qualitative Sociology for suggesting this connection.
On several occasions I thanked the group organizers who let me do fieldwork in their events by helping players and answering their questions. In these sessions, I tried as much as possible to stick to the rules and procedures and to avoid engaging in translations into “real life.” First, as the researcher, I did not want to be the person introducing this connection. Second, how could I translate the game into the world of investing and financial freedom if that was not my “real life”? I discovered that keeping the game at the game level demanded a great effort. Translation is an integral part of the game.
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Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Gil Eyal, Diane Vaughan, Claudio Benzecry, Pilar Zazueta, Javier Auyero, David Stark, William McAllister, Uri Shwed, Zsuzsanna Vargha, and the anonymous reviewers of Qualitative Sociology for comments on previous versions of this article. I presented previous versions in the panel “What’s New at the Intersection between Culture and the Economy” at the American Sociological Association Meeting in San Francisco in 2009, and at a session of the Interdisciplinary Mellon Fellows workshop at the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University. Although I cannot name them, I thank Cashflow players and organizers, who made this paper possible. Financial assistance for research in Argentina was provided by a grant from the Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University.
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Fridman, D. From Rats to Riches: Game Playing and the Production of the Capitalist Self. Qual Sociol 33, 423–446 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-010-9171-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-010-9171-z