Du « matheux » bourgeois au « Quant » corporate

Les héritiers des classes supérieures scientifiques à l’épreuve de la finance londonienne

Abstract

How can inheritors of the upper scientific classes, driven by a disinterested, scholarly taste for mathematics, turn into financial agents committed to the corporate spirit? This paper offers a detailed analysis of the socialization process that shape their “scientific cultural capital”, as they learn to domesticate math with the family, at school, and into the financial world. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and professional archives (a collection of cover letters and pay scales), it unveils the making of the conflicting dispositions that make up the professional ethos of French “Quants”, who work as mathematicians-engineers in the City of London. Driven by powerful ascetic and scholastic dispositions, combined with a relentless craving for science, Quants nevertheless have to incorporate new relational social skills. More than intellectual prowess, corporate culture calls for a disposition to emotional detachment, a rational-strategic disposition, and a venal disposition that runs against the playful seriousness that Quants cultivated before entering the labour market. To convert their technical mastery into economic capital, Quants have to develop pedagogical and social skills which break with a habitus built on academic superiority. Confronted with these challenges, Quants display a wide range of attitudes. While these uneven adaptive strategies certainly reflect seniority, some variations mirror subtle differences that can be found in terms of cultural capital between distinct fractions of the French scientific bourgeoisie. The stylized depiction of professional dispositions captures both the unsung practices of an occupational group and the latest transformations of elite culture.