Dr Joel Lazarus

Banking on democratic television: co-producing culture to promote public praxis

This ISRF grant will kickstart an ambitious four-year project that will culminate in the production of a television drama series and complementary website. The series will be based on the trading floor of an investment bank and will be produced through a process of participatory ethnography and collaboration between bank staff, scholars, and script-writers. A ‘Sociological Imagination’ website, co-produced by philosophers and social scientists, will accompany the series (cf. Mills 1959). It will provide viewers with the analytical tools needed to critically interpret and respond to the drama and, by extension, their own lives. This will be stimulated and facilitated by the creation of online fora and by encouraging viewers to set up book club-style local discussion groups.

The project is focused on addressing two contemporary, fundamental, and interrelated social challenges, namely the dominance of financial capital and the demise of our democracy. It has two main goals. First, the drama can reinvigorate public debate about the future of banks and finance in our society. Second, the drama and website can catalyse a public process of praxis needed to reimagine and rebuild our democracy. In this way, the project is politically prefigurative, embodying the kind of transformative democratic practices it seeks to promote.

My ISRF year (Year One) will be spent developing the concept and practice of ‘democratic television’ through academic study and the convening of a workshop. The ideas and plans generated will be publicised via a journal article, conference presentations, blogs, and a short film. In Year One, I will also secure funding for future years (see below). Year Two will be spent conducting and analysing fieldwork. In Year Three, I will oversee the co-production of the drama series’ script. In Year Four, the drama series and the website will be produced.