What if markets are not natural forces but carefully constructed systems of meaning, paperwork, and power? How do legal frameworks, financial instruments, and bureaucratic practices quietly shape the world we take for granted? And what does it mean to study the economy not just as numbers, but as culture?

Annelise Riles is a legal scholar and anthropologist known for her work on global finance, legal knowledge, and institutional practice. She has held faculty positions at Cornell Law School and University College London and is widely recognized for bridging anthropology and law to better understand how financial and regulatory systems actually function. Her research examines the everyday tools and documents that underpin global markets, revealing the social and cultural dimensions of economic life.

In this episode, we explore how financial systems are built through legal documents, professional norms, and institutional routines that most people never see. Annelise challenges the idea that markets operate independently of social life, instead showing how they are sustained by relationships, shared assumptions, and forms of expertise. We discuss how contracts, compliance structures, and regulatory frameworks are not merely technical devices but expressions of particular worldviews about risk, value, and responsibility.

Our conversation also turns to the implications for education and public life. If the economy is constructed through human practices, then it can be reimagined. Annelise invites us to think more critically about who designs economic systems, whose knowledge counts, and how legal education shapes future decision-makers. This episode offers a profound rethinking of what the economy is and how understanding its social foundations opens the possibility for change.