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`Within the cacophony of voices trying to explain the recent
financial crisis, Elena Esposito's voice sounds clear and deep.
Steering away from simplistic condemnations and equally simplistic
prescriptions for betterment, she connects the very invention of
derivatives to that eternal human hope - of controlling the future.
While the task is impossible, the attempts never stop, and the very
process of attempting it brings some consolation. And while
derivatives can be seen, claim sociologists of finance, as
performative, that is shaping the future they promise to control,
even this is far from certain. Esposito's fascinating and beautiful
work is an important contribution to the sociology of finance, a
subdiscipline of sociology that took on itself an extremely
important task of explaining how the finance markets really work.'
- Barbara Czarniawska, University of Gothenburg, Sweden `This is a
brilliant and timely book that shows how financing is centrally
implicated in the very unpredictability and uncertainty it purports
to master. With the incisiveness characteristic of her style and
writing, Esposito reads economics in innovative ways that disclose
the hidden premises by which financial instruments trade and
consume the prospects of the future.' - Jannis Kallinikos, London
School of Economics, UK `Elena Esposito's analysis of financial
markets and of their recent decline is radically different from the
analyses which can be found in economic journals or books.
Financial operations are reduced to their basic dimensions: time
and money. Under this perspective, what is sold on financial
markets is the possibility for the creation of commitments in the
course of time, the possibility for the combination of these
commitments with one another, and the identification of chances for
the achievement of profit opportunities through the creation of
specific combinations. The author argues that the recent crisis of
the financial system was caused by oversimplified visions of the
future and of risk leading to the consequence that options were not
available in the present because all possibilities had been used up
by the future. This oversimplified vision of the future imploded,
and trust with it. The state tried to reconstruct options for the
future in order to open up new possibilities and chances for
learning. The author does not deliver recipes on how to prevent
severe crises of the financial system in the future. Yet, her
concept facilitates understanding of how financial futures are
opened up or closed and thus provides insights into basic
principles on whose basis future opportunities can be kept open and
trust can be maintained. Innovative reforms of the financial system
can only develop on the basis of unconventional analyses. Elena
Esposito's book contains an analysis of this kind.' - Alfred
Kieser, Mannheim University, Germany `Elena Esposito's book is a
fundamental analysis of time in economics. With economic rigour
underpinned by sociological reasoning, she explains the futures
market more clearly than is possible with economic analysis alone.
Economic concepts are considered in terms of time - actors deal in
the present with future risks by transferring these risks to the
present situation. As a result, we get more options and more risks
at the same time: at present. No equilibrium will balance these
trades because of the asymmetry of time: our actual decisions deal
with our imagination of the future, that is, with the future of the
present, but the results will be realized in the presence of the
future - different modalities of time. The book is a sound
reflection on modelling time in economic theory, a "must" for
economists.' - Birger P. Priddat, Witten/Herdecke University,
Germany `The Future of Futures is an original and intellectually
provocative book which forces the reader to think. Esposito's essay
fulfils two rather different functions. On the one hand, it brings
new and persuasive arguments to bear against the erroneous thesis
that the present financial crisis is merely due to human mistakes
and to some specific government failures. On the other hand, the
book suggests that only by reconsidering the role of time in the
economy is it possible to make full sense of the crisis and to
re-orient in a desired direction the future movements of money. It
is a well-known fact that traditional economics has always adhered
to a spatial conception of time, according to which time, like
space, is perfectly reversible. Whence its inability both to
understand how economies develop and to prescribe adequate
policies. The author's proposal is to move steps ahead in the
direction of an analysis of an economy in time, where both
historical time and time as duration can find a place. Esposito's
well-written, jargon-free book will capture the attention of anyone
seriously interested in the future of our market systems.' -
Stefano Zamagni, University of Bologna and Johns Hopkins
University, Bologna Center, Italy This book reconstructs the
dynamics of economics, beginning explicitly with the role and the
relevance of time: money uses the future in order to generate
present wealth. Financial markets sell and buy risk, thereby
binding the future. Elena Esposito explains that complex risk
management techniques of structured finance produce new and
uncontrolled risks because they use a simplified idea of the
future, failing to account for how the future reacts to attempts at
controlling it. During the recent financial crisis, the future had
already been used (through securitizations, derivatives and other
tools) to the extent that we had many futures, but no open future
available.
Luhmann's theory is fascinating and complex. It offers incomparably
enlightening insights, references and research opportunities, but
reveals its utility only after a quite high competence threshold.
Using the reticular form of the glossary, this book makes the
theory accessible while maintaining its complexity. Without being
obstructed by knowledge gaps or by references to concepts presented
elsewhere, readers inside and outside sociology get the required
support to explore sociological systems theory and to engage with
it. Luhmann himself, in his introduction, praises the form of the
glossary to cope with the challenges of the theoretical description
of our highly complex society.
Das Erleben der Welt kann nur unter der Voraussetzung ihrer
Tatsachlichkeit erfolgen. Dazu muss ihre Konstruiertheit hinter
ontischen Verweisen verschwinden. Erfolgt die erste Zurichtung der
Welt kontingent, ist sie doch nicht beliebig. Die Konstruktion hat
notwendige Folgen als Tatsachen. Darauf setzen gesellschaftliche
Debatten in Politik, Wirtschaft oder Massenmedien, die Eingang auch
in die Wissenschaft finden. Gelingt die Erinnerung an die
anfangliche Konstruktion nicht, erfolgt Reflexion nur noch verkurzt
und unzureichend. Es kommt darauf an, den sozial konstruierten
Charakter der Welt in ihrer ontischen Wirkung zu begreifen."
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