Workshop 'The Fax Generation': Social and cultural histories of financialisation in Britain Add to calendar 2026-04-08 17:00 2026-04-08 18:30 Europe/Rome 'The Fax Generation': Social and cultural histories of financialisation in Britain Emeroteca Badia Fiesolana YYYY-MM-DD Print Share: Share on Facebook Share on BlueSky Share on X Share on LinkedIn Send by email Scheduled dates Apr 08 2026 17:00 - 18:30 CEST Emeroteca, Badia Fiesolana Organised by Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies The Max Weber Programme invites you to the third instalment of the multidisciplinary research workshop seminar series "Financialization: Past and Present" In 1988, the British newspaper The Daily Mail ran an article titled ’The Fax Generation’. In it, journalist Annie Tempest attempted to describe the impact of almost ten years of Conservative Party political and economic reform on the outlook of Britain’s young people. To do so, she focused on what she described as the most important identifier of 'Thatcher’s children’ - the Filofax. This loose-leaf organiser became a cultural icon of the 1980s, but the question for historians is can we (and should we) connect something like a personal organiser to the large-scale reorganisation of Britain’s political economy around the workings of global financial markets? This paper explores the social and cultural markers (and mechanisms) of financialisation in Britain through a study of the material objects, fashions, and popular cultural depictions associated with yuppies (a shorthand for Young, Urban, Professionals). In particular, it considers the role that class and gender played in normalising the new expectations placed on white-collar workers, investors, and savers in Britain’s rapidly growing financial services sector in the closing decades of the twentieth century. Register