Time, role of the past and varieties of fictional expectations: comments on Jens Beckert’s Imagined Futures
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"Time, role of the past and varietie..." refers background in this paper
...Similarly to Mark Granovetter (1985), whose dissatisfaction with both over- and undersocialized conceptions of human action ushered in the concept of embeddedness, Beckert introduces fictional expectations as his own solution to a similar problem....
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"Time, role of the past and varietie..." refers background in this paper
...Jens Beckert’s superb book builds on his earlier work analysing the nature of capitalism, the limitations of the economic approach, specifically rational choice theory, as an explanation for economic behaviour, and the prominent role of uncertainty in economic life (Beckert 1996)....
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281 citations
"Time, role of the past and varietie..." refers background in this paper
...…the main point of forecasts is not divining the truth, but coordination and legitimacy (they ‘transform uncertainty into a fictitious certainty’, Beckert 2016, 242), they can lead to isomorphism and operate as conventions (we also learn that macroeconomic forecasters tend to be…...
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...Beckert is also critical of stratification research because it does ‘not account for the creativity engendered by expectations, for an actor’s ability to imagine futures that deviate from existing norms and habits and create counterfactual worlds’ (Beckert 2016, 53)....
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...…open (‘If the future is unforeseeable, then expectations are necessarily contingent; since no one can know what the future will look like, the number of possible scenarios to be imagined is infinite’ (Beckert 2016, 275) and (2) imaginaries are shaped by the past and not everything is possible....
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...Furthermore, Beckert contends that ‘if forecasts are to serve their true purpose, their functional character must remain hidden’ (Beckert 2016, 244)....
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...…when referencing Carruthers and Babb (1996), Beckert seems to agree with the last point: ‘Belief in the stability of money, as in other institutions, is most effective if actors are unaware of the possibility of its faltering: that is, if its stability becomes naturalized’ (Beckert 2016, 109)....
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221 citations
"Time, role of the past and varietie..." refers background in this paper
...…the main point of forecasts is not divining the truth, but coordination and legitimacy (they ‘transform uncertainty into a fictitious certainty’, Beckert 2016, 242), they can lead to isomorphism and operate as conventions (we also learn that macroeconomic forecasters tend to be…...
[...]
...Beckert is also critical of stratification research because it does ‘not account for the creativity engendered by expectations, for an actor’s ability to imagine futures that deviate from existing norms and habits and create counterfactual worlds’ (Beckert 2016, 53)....
[...]
...…open (‘If the future is unforeseeable, then expectations are necessarily contingent; since no one can know what the future will look like, the number of possible scenarios to be imagined is infinite’ (Beckert 2016, 275) and (2) imaginaries are shaped by the past and not everything is possible....
[...]
...Furthermore, Beckert contends that ‘if forecasts are to serve their true purpose, their functional character must remain hidden’ (Beckert 2016, 244)....
[...]
...…when referencing Carruthers and Babb (1996), Beckert seems to agree with the last point: ‘Belief in the stability of money, as in other institutions, is most effective if actors are unaware of the possibility of its faltering: that is, if its stability becomes naturalized’ (Beckert 2016, 109)....
[...]