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Technology in financial networks 211however, do not examine the significance or impact of technological change on the practicesof actors or the structure of markets.5. Urs Breugger and Karin Knorr Cetina (2002) have shown how electronic networks canestablish a unified temporal platform that allows for global interchanges. They see this asestablishing a new social system based on economic transactions. Breugger and Cetinawork on markets where communications and relationships between individual traders arepossible even at a global scale. In the markets examined here, traders work without thispersonal contact and instead interact with the market as a whole as their trading screendepicts it. This makes the issue of temporal coordination less crucial for the individualtraders, although it remains critical for the electronic trading system.6. In this way, the face-to-face trading pit is just as much a “system of connectivity and integration”as Breugger and Knorr Cetina (2002) have claimed for electronic platforms incurrency markets.7. See Smith (1989) for a detailed account of the social operation of auctions.8. Granovetter (1973) is the foundation of a body of sociological research that explains howsocial networks support the distribution of resources.9. Harrison White (1981) analyzes the way that mutual observation among competitorscreates markets.10. I use the masculine pronoun descriptively throughout. The CBOT trading floor and theLDF dealing room were staffed overwhelmingly by male traders.11. Sociologist Wayne Baker (1984) has shown how this fragmentation of a centralizedmarket affects volatility and price in the market.12. Breugger and Knorr Cetina (2002) call this “temporal coordination,” and point to thecollectivities that develop from interacting within time when acting at a distance fromcompetitors. I argue that this is in some ways specific to markets where actors are knownto one another, such as the foreign exchange markets that Breugger and Knorr Cetinastudy. The “virtual society” that these foreign exchange traders form is anathema to thenotions of efficiency that futures exchange managers seek to build into their systems. Infutures exchanges, temporal coordination is the condition for creating a market. Yet, at thesame time, action at a distance offers a way for eviscerating the social content of themarket, at least at the level of representation.13. This logic of creating direct market access I call “disintermediation,” borrowing a termfrom the financial industry for bringing debt instruments directly to the market (Zaloom,2003). However, from an analytic point of view, these interactions and communicationsare always mediated by technologies, relationships, and legal rules.14. This feedback loop between economic theory and the marketplace Michel Callon (1998)has described as “the performativity of markets.”15. See Burton Malkiel (1999) for an accessible and thorough explanation of this theory.16. Keith Hampton and Barry Wellman (2003) have observed similar reinforcement ofpersonal and electronic ties in Netville. However, in this case there was an ethical commitmentto participation in community and a fear that Internet involvement would dissolvelocal ties. In financial markets, the “efficiency” of electronic communications rests on theevacuation of personal interactions. The case of the futures markets shows that it takesaggressive intention to create an online arena devoid of personal interaction. From thisperspective, anxiety over the loss of community in an Internet era is misplaced.REFERENCESBaker, Wayne E. (1984) “Floor Trading and Crowd Dynamics,” in P. A. Adler and P.Adler (eds), The Social Dynamics of Financial Markets, pp. 107–28. Greenwich:JAI Press.Breugger, Urs and Knorr Cetina, Karin (2002) “Global Microstructures: The VirtualSocieties of Financial Markets,” American Journal of Sociology 107 (4): 905–50.