Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics - Couverture rigide

Beckert, Jens

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0674088824 ISBN 13 : 9780674088825

Editeur : Harvard University Press, 2016

A propos du livre

Revue de presse :

"In Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics, Jens Beckert explores how individual and collective expectations shape the functioning of capitalist systems, challenging mainstream economic models based around efficient markets, rational expectations and general equilibrium. This is a welcome account rich with examples that contributes to understanding the structuring role played by shared fictions"

LSE Review Of Books, by Mehmet Kerem Coban

"Beckert's breathtaking, erudite new book illuminates what is distinctive about modern capitalism. Traditional societies were oriented to the past and the never-ending replication of the social order today everything we do is based on imagined futures comprising fictions about how the world might be. We innovate, build entire industries, and invest based on what we can envision. We are often wrong, but Beckert argues passionately that 'Homo economicus' is far from a calculating actor who bases decisions on hard evidence he is a fantasist and visionary." --Frank Dobbin, Harvard University

"Much of the literature in the sociology of markets has focused on making sense of the social structuring of markets by governments, firms, networks, and market devices. Jens Beckert's book reminds us that the people who produce markets have to figure out what the future is like in order to build it. This act of imagination and the leap into an uncertain future is at the core of the dynamics of markets, entrepreneurship, and the creation of new markets. His provocative book considers how the role of imagining the future affects money and credit, investment, innovation, and consumption." --Neil Fligstein, University of California, Berkeley

"How do we as consumers and creators, investors and economic actors approach the unknowability of future markets? [Beckert] mounts an original argument that our fictional expectations, collectively-held images, and finally dreams of the future not only guide our forecasts and choices but generate actual economic activity." --David Slocum, Forbes.com

Présentation de l'éditeur :

In a capitalist system, consumers, investors, and corporations orient their activities toward a future that contains opportunities and risks. How actors assess uncertainty is a problem that economists have tried to solve through general equilibrium and rational expectations theory. Powerful as these tools are, they underestimate the future's unknowability by assuming that markets correctly forecast what is to come. Jens Beckert adds a new chapter to the theory of capitalism by demonstrating how fictional expectations drive modern economies-or throw them into crisis when imagined futures fail to materialise. Collectively held images of how the future will unfold free actors from paralysing doubt, enabling them to commit resources even if those expectations prove inaccurate. Beckert distinguishes fictional expectations from performativity theory, which holds that predictions become self-fulfilling prophecies. Economic forecasts are important not because they produce the futures they envision but because they create the expectations that generate economic activity in the first place: the expectation that money will retain its purchasing power, that capital investments will make a profit, that consumer purchases will satisfy our dreams. As Imagined Futures shows, those who ignore the role of real uncertainty and fictional expectations in market dynamics misunderstand the nature of capitalism.

À propos de cette édition

• Éditeur: Harvard University Press
• Date d'édition: 2016
• ISBN 10: 0674088824
• ISBN 13: 9780674088825
• Reliure: Relié
• Numéro d'édition: 1
• Nombre de pages: 384