An Introduction to a Study on Household Participation in Capital Markets: Embourgeoisement, Heterodoxy and Transformation in the Australian Financial System.

This paper is an introduction to a doctoral dissertation on contemporary share ownership amongst Australian households. The study uses the tools of class analysis and the theoretical work of Wright to examine this phenomenon and argues that it is an example of embourgeoisement in which the capitalist field of finance widens to incorporate proletariat class locations. Applying the social theory of Bourdieu, the study asks whether this process of field widening represents a heterodox transformation of the field or an expansion along orthodox lines. In examining the internal processes of the field, the study then employs the work of Habermas on deliberative democracy and of Arendt on public political spaces to analyse the features of contemporary corporate governance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]