The Origins of Consumer Financial Literacy Education

Abstract

Having demonstrated the inherent crisis tendencies within capitalism and highlighted how economic risk is created and politically manipulated, this chapter and the next analyze and critique the historical foundations, which support the individualization of economic risk and consumer financial literacy. Both this chapter and the next emphasize that consumer financial literacy did not appear ex nihilo but rather has its roots in the dominant subjectivities, practices and resources we use to understand the individual, the capitalist economy and the relationship between both. The specific goal of this chapter is to better see the financially literate consumer subject’s political character beneath his or her neutral, technical veneer.