REALISING THE FUTURE

A half-day workshop on the politics, methodologies and technologies of economic prediction and expectation
20 December 2017, 2-6pm

Modernity, capitalism and finance involve distinctive orientations towards the future, in which a degree of uncertainty, risk and change are assumed. Various techniques of calculation and representation promise to render this condition manageable and profitable, from actuarial risk assessment, through the design of business models, to the hedging instruments of private finance. Epochal crises and upheavals, such as climate change and financial crisis, stretch these techniques to their limit, placing their legitimacy and capability in question. Under these conditions, the appeal of collective planning or tradition – which seek to reduce uncertainty overall – become more politically attractive.

This half-day workshop explores the calculative devices, experts, discourses and images through which the future becomes available as an economic concern in the present, and considers the politics and controversies that arise in and around the future today. It brings together perspectives from economic sociology, STS, anthropology and political economy, to address the future as an ontological, epistemological, methodological, political and cultural problem which shapes the character of capitalism.

Speakers:

• Jens Beckert – Max Planck Institute and author of Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics
• Liliana Doganova – Ecole des Mines and co-author of Capitalization: A Cultural Guide
• Fabian Muniesa – Ecole des Mines and co-author of Capitalization: A Cultural Guide
• Nick Taylor – Goldsmiths and Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity

If you would like to attend, please register via Eventbrite, or click the button below.