This study uses Swiss panel data between 2011 and 2020 to explore changes in media repertoires and the reciprocal effects of individuals with a minimal media consumption and their level of political engagement (including interest in politics, political participation, and frequency of political discussions). Media repertoires are based on the combination of common sources (including traditional news, free news, magazines, internet news, etc.), thus allowing for a comparable assessment of media use over time while also considering fundamental changes in the supply of news media sources. At the aggregated level, the study shows how different media repertoires evolve over time, while focusing on the prevalence of the “Low Media User” repertoire and on the transition between repertoires. At the individual level, it explores how low media reliance connect to characteristics using cross-lagged effects analysis. The study’s most important result relates to the negative effect of higher political engagement on minimal media consumption. This result is explained in the light of the particularities of the Swiss political and media systems.

L’analyse des données de l’enquête MOSAiCH 2022, représentative de la population résidente en Suisse, indique que les femmes et les personnes non hétérosexuelles déclarent plus fréquemment avoir été la cible de diverses formes de discriminations et de violences de genre que les autres groupes de personnes. Nous discutons de la validité de ces résultats à la lumière d’autres enquêtes, ainsi que de l’intérêt d’intégrer plus systématiquement, dans les enquêtes sociales générales, des indicateurs portant sur les expériences de discriminations et de violences.

This introduction to the special issue highlights how the challenges from regulation, digitalization, and sustainability transform banking and finance in the 21st century. Following a short review of the sociology of finance and banking within Swiss economic sociology, it presents the main contributions of the articles of the special issue, which examine changing financial elites in Switzerland, digital platforms’ and cryptocurrencies’ social effects, and the moralization of finance through impact and ethical investing.

Gibt es wirklich nur die Freiheit als egoistische Erfüllung eigener Freiheiten? Die klassische und aktuelle Soziologie hat Theorieangebote, die eine Vielfalt von Freiheitsaspekten deutlich machen, von denen hier mit Simmel und der Relationalen Soziologie insbesondere die positive Freiheit betont wird. Gezeigt wird, dass sich Freiheit von Grund auf als soziales Phänomen und als soziale Errungenschaft verstehen lässt. Entsprechend eröffnen sich neue Analysemöglichkeiten und Blickachsen auch für die empirische Forschung.

Anhand der beruflichen und akademischen Tertiärbildung wird die Bildungsexpansion in der Schweiz untersucht. Seit den 1970er Jahren nehmen die Chancen für alle tertiären Abschlüsse zu. Die soziale Ungleichheit von Studienchancen nimmt über die Zeit und Kohorten stärker ab als dies für die berufliche Tertiärbildung der Fall ist. Im internationalen Vergleich wird für die Jahre 2011 und 2019 ersichtlich, dass die Schweiz nicht zur „besten aller möglichen Welten“ beim Erwerb von tertiären Abschlüssen in Unabhängigkeit von der sozialen Herkunft nachwachsender Generationen gehört.

As Argentina has become one of the countries with the highest inflation rates in the world, risky financial investments via digital platforms have increasingly become part of the everyday financial repertoires developed by individuals seeking to protect or enhance the value of their money. In particular, cryptocurrencies have become very popular among young people. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data, this paper explores the financial practices of rookie investors, analyzing how cryptocurrencies contribute to shaping a specific form of participation in finance.

We study the motivations and constraints for ethical banking and ethical investing by private individuals in Switzerland with a representative survey of the general population. The use of both types of ethical finance instruments is motivated by ethical beliefs and constrained by the endowment with various forms of economic and cultural capital. Yet, ethical banking is more strongly linked to ethical motivations, while ethical investing is more resource dependent. Moreover, exposure to topics of sustainability during socialization fosters the use of ethical finance.

Prior research explains socioeconomic differences in financial decisions by the habitus, preferences and constraints. Yet financial decisions are increasingly shaped by platforms, which prefigure subjectivities and behaviours. Analysing scripts of financial platforms targeted at different classes, we suggest that the scripts of the platforms used by diverse classes become central to fostering class differences in financial decisions. Contributions to the sociology of finance, class-formation and the performativity of marketing are discussed.

This paper analyses the moral discourse of contemporary “caring capitalists” through a Geneva-based study of impact asset managers seeking to generate measurable social and environmental results alongside a financial return. The discursive analysis reveals how strongly impact investing is grounded in the worldview of finance, in spite of its claim to transcend it. In a context of uncertainty about impact, we also show that principle-based deontological frameworks provide our participants with an attractive addition to their consequentialist reasoning.

This paper studies the evolution of banking elites and banking strategy of the largest Swiss banks since 1945. Between 1985 and 2000, an elite transformation occurred within the large Swiss banks. A Swiss-oriented business and political elite was replaced by a US-socialized financial elite. The displacement Swiss-oriented business and political elite closely preceded the decline of retail banking and the shift of loan volumes from production to finance.