Uncertain futures: Imaginaries, narratives, and calculative technologies

Jens Beckert and Richard Bronk

No 19/10, MPIfG Discussion Paper from Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Abstract: Dynamic capitalist economies are characterised by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. How then do economic actors form expectations and decide how to act despite this uncertainty? This paper focuses on the role played by imaginaries, narratives, and calculative technologies, and argues that the market impact of shared calculation devices, social narratives, and contingent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of 'narrative economics' and a theory of fictional (rather than rational) expectations. When expectations cannot be anchored in objective probability functions, the future belongs to those with the market, political, or rhetorical power to make their models or stories count. The paper also explores the dangers of analytical monocultures and the discourse of best practice in conditions of uncertainty, and considers the link between uncertainty and some aspects of populism.

Keywords: calculation; fictional expectations; future; imaginaries; innovation; narrative economics; uncertainty; fiktionale Erwartungen; Innovation; Kalkulation; narrative Wirtschaftswissenschaften; Ungewissheit; Vorstellungen; Zukunft (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-upt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Working Paper: Uncertain futures: imaginaries, narratives and calculative technologies (2019)
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