Lecture: Imagined Futures and Capitalist Dynamics

Location: CBS, Kilen, Kilevej 14, 2000 Frederiksberg, room KS43

In a capitalist system, consumers, investors, and corporations orient their activities toward a future that contains opportunities and risks. How do actors assess the future if this future is open and uncertain? In the talk, I attempt to add a new chapter to the theory of capitalism by demonstrating how fictional expectations drive modern economies – or throw them into crisis when the imagined futures fail to materialize. Collectively held images of how the future will unfold are critical because they free economic actors from paralyzing doubt, enabling them to commit resources and coordinate decisions even if those expectations prove inaccurate. Since they are not confined to empirical reality, fictional expectations are  a source of creativity in the economy. The talk is based on Jens Beckert’s recently published book Imagined Futures. Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics (Harvard University Press, 2016).

Professor Beckert is Director at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (MPIfG) and a member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. His main research interests are in the sociology of markets and the social embeddedness of economic action. He is the author of numerous research articles and monographs, including Beyond the Market: the Social Foundations of Economic Efficiency (Princeton University Press, 2002).

REGISTRATION

The event is free, but please register no later than Monday, June 4th to: 
mpp-relations@cbs.dk. For further questions please contact Assoc. Prof. Stefan Schwarzkopf (MPP): ssc.mpp@cbs.dk.