Turning Words, Spinning Worlds

This collection represents Michael Rosen's encounter with an "ethnography of the centre" - the study of cultural orders in the heart of the metropolis. In a field where it is more common to study the other rather than the self, the low rather than the high, the peripheral rather than the central, Michael Rosen instead took as his subject the complex, frenzied and interrelated occupational worlds of finance and advertising that create, channel and trade in the currencies of meaning that sustain and animate the cultural economy of the metropolis and the lives of its residents. This collage of images, insights, stories, analysis and reflection gives the reader a taste of what ethnography can accomplish when directed at the citadels of power rather than its outposts.