ABSTRACT Financial Persuasion: An Autoethnography By John Maxam McElroy, MA, MS Advisory Committee Chair: Dr. Marsha Carolan This autoethnography explores experiences as an insider in the financial services community of the retail brokerage business at Merrill Lynch in Indianapolis. This qualitative process represents a ten year journey of growth as I examine how these experiences have affected my relationships in the world. Autoethnography serves as a method of `therapeutic' interrogation of learned practices, hidden strategies and complex translations about our financial ecology; how it is used to systemically mislead individuals, families, and communities during this important economic moment in our collective history. Included are reflexive stories interweaving the personal and cultural migration from `conventional business thought' that occurred when I transitioned from a financial consultant at Merrill Lynch into a trainee in the Marriage and Family Therapy Doctoral Program at Michigan State University. This project explores connections between personal experiences and embedded critical dialogues problematizing neoliberal policies, financial literacy education, persuasion tactics used against consumers in the exploitation of informational asymmetries for profit. Since we cannot change that which we do not have an awareness (Denzin, 2009), this study aims to make the economically invisible more visible. Illumination is the best disinfectant (Brandeis, 1914) where financial complexity is a disguise for deception (Galbraith, 1958).
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