Speculation: a political economy of technologies of imagination

Abstract

Post-crisis capitalism and critiqueHow is it possible to critique capitalism when it is being recreated through self-criticism?The financial crisis of 2007-2008, fears of China's expansion and the rise of popularism have generated new speculations within institutions that govern the economy. The IMF and World Bank worry about inequality and urge investment policies such as infrastructure provisioning. Central banks and academic macro-economists question formal equilibrium models and explore the human foundations of economic action. Financial institutions and corporations focus on ethical investment and build allianceswith 'patient' capital such as pension funds. And governments argue that they face radical economic uncertainties and can only ameliorate complex forces. We live within a post-crisis capitalism in which public contention about its social consequences is Commented [B1]: Campbell, 2015 is not in the References. LB Added Commented [B4]: Sneath et al.

The spectral scientists of corridor B: Neoliberalization and its ghosts in higher education

“…With the laboratory bench out of reach, they were no longer able to publish and build grant applications and within a short period of time, they were no longer expected to report on doing either. Paperworkforms, tables, applications, material transfer agreements, licenses, handbooks, contracts, orders, protocols, assessments etc.serve as technologies of the imagination by making academic labour the subject and object of lots of other kinds of labour and by being the harbinger of promissory futures (Bear, 2020). Paperwork carried speculative dimensions and yet it seemed to discipline academic labour by punctuating time and ordering space in ways that were not considered in any assessment of scientific work or in the imaginaries of the vocation.…”

Philosophical Concepts And Economic Theory Of Organization Of The Modern Era

“…Without denying the key economic laws of the classics, he significantly expanded the boundaries of the firm's methodology and the scope of its research. He investigated the mono-economic agent as the behaviour of consumer groups which was reflected in further marketing concepts of the XX and even XXI centuries, and the process of determining the equilibrium was first tried to be considered in dynamics, forming the preconditions for the emergence of the theory of Newman -Wolfe and evolutionary trends in economic theory (Bear, 2020). Konzelmann et al (2018) researched Marshall's scientific works on the role of cooperation between organizations and the synergistic effect for organizations of different levels, both at the level of each company and within the framework of the association).…”

Fixing Inequalities in Time

“…Knowledge here is capitalist speculation. In a way that is not captured by Foucauldian or Callonesque approaches it ensures the energies of liquidity flow to produce institutional power and financial accumulation (Bear 2020a). It is also judged by its ability to generate further capital and liquidity.…”

“…Speculative practices include: techne or calculative devices, epistemes or formal knowledge, and ethics or judgements. These are used to: anticipate the future; stimulate its emergence, and to control it (Bear 2020a;Bear, Birla and Puri 2015). Crucially technical calculations, formal discourses, as well as explicitly ethical accounts are all moral practices.…”