Abstract
In this original, erudite book, Jens Beckert examines the ways in which market participants confront market contingencies in modern capitalism. What sets Imagined Futures: Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics apart from most previous accounts is Beckert’s privileging of “imagined futures” and “fictional expectations” rather than the dominant practice of using past market patterns to explain future markets. In doing so, Beckert not only introduces a different framing for understanding how market participants confront market contingencies but provides a richer sociological framing of how markets function.
A central theme running through this account is the temporal character of modern capitalism. Capitalism, according to Beckert, not only assumes an open future full of contingencies but embraces this future. In this ever-changing world, the ability to predict what the future will produce is of vital importance. You may not be able to be right all the time, but you need to be able to make “reasonable” predictions. Though numerous different means for doing this have been generated over the years, most, as noted above, have relied heavily on trying to discover patterns in the way past markets have behaved. Beckert reviews these methods in great detail. In doing so, he reveals their limitations. More importantly, he makes his own case that market participants actually rely to a greater extent on what he labels as “imagined futures” and “fictional expectations” to deal with the contingencies they confront.
Beckert shows that the unpredictability of the market is due in large measure to the fact that modern markets are embedded in a wide range of multi-faceted socially grounded narratives. Different narratives generate different predictions. While this is an original argument, Beckert draws on a wide range of sociological, economic, and philosophical theorists, including Dewey, Durkheim, and Keynes, to make his case. Beckert realizes that these expectations can in no way actually predict the future for the simple reason that there always exists a multitude of these expectations. He nevertheless makes an extremely strong case that the dynamics of modern capitalism and market behavior rely on them, given that they are embedded in sociologically grounded narratives.
Beckert provides a detailed account of howthe four major “building blocks” of capitalism—money and credit, investments, innovation, and consumption—embody and utilize “imagined futures” and “fictional expectations.” He expands on this overview by showing how both economic forecasting and economic theory formalize their own range of narratives that rely on “imagined futures” and “fictional expectations.” Analysis and past behavioral patterns clearly play a role, but when it comes to grasping the dynamics of modern capitalism, “imagined futures” dominate.
Though Beckert’s argument is focused on modern capitalism, he ends his book by suggesting that the power of “imagined futures” and “fictional expectations” is not limited to economics and modern capitalism. They function in a wide range of political and social activities. This perspective underscores another theme that deserves wider attention, namely the extent to which economic events and models continue to seep into other sectors of our society.
Taken together, the central themes of this book more than qualify it as a significant contribution not only to economic sociology but to the social sciences in general. It does leave us, however, with an unacknowledged elephant in the room, namely, the contingencies of future events. Put somewhat differently, the contingencies of future events may necessitate “imagined futures,” but it is a stretch to credit them with generating these contingencies. They very well might contribute in the manner of “self-fulfilling prophecies,” but they can’t be held responsible for all contingencies. The physical world we live in is itself pervaded by all sorts of natural or physical contingencies. Keynes, who privileged mindsets and expectations of market participants in determining the future of any market, also acknowledges an important set of such contingencies in his notion of “animal instincts,” as noted by Beckert. The erratic flows of different commodities and financial instruments that constitute modern markets generate numerous contingencies of their own.
What we have here is another “reality” exposed by modern capitalism and economic markets. Economic markets not only require participants to accept and employ numerous “imagined futures” to cope with unpredictable future events, they also demand that we accept the numerous contingencies that pervade the world. These contingent events are ontological, not simply epistemological, in origin and as such must be dealt with even though they are unpredictable. Successful market practitioners learn how to confront these contingencies just as they learn how to generate “imagined futures” (see Smith 2015). Beckert’s book provides the reader with a multifaceted taste of this world. Bon appétit!