Documents Beckert, Jens 14 results

"Uncertain Futures considers how economic actors visualize the future and decide how to act in conditions of radical uncertainty. It starts from the premise that dynamic capitalist economies are characterized by relentless innovation and novelty and hence exhibit an indeterminacy that cannot be reduced to measurable risk. The organizing question then becomes how economic actors form expectations and make decisions despite the uncertainty they face. This edited volume lays the foundations for a new model of economic reasoning by showing how, in conditions of uncertainty, economic actors combine calculation with imaginaries and narratives to form fictional expectations that coordinate action and provide the confidence to act. It draws on groundbreaking research in economic sociology, economics, anthropology, and psychology to present theoretically grounded empirical case studies. These demonstrate how grand narratives, central bank forward guidance, economic forecasts, finance models, business plans, visions of technological futures, and new era stories influence behaviour and become instruments of power in markets and societies. The market impact of shared calculative devices, social narratives, and contingent imaginaries underlines the rationale for a new form of narrative economics."

"Märkte sind die bedeutendste Institution zur Steuerung kapitalistischer Ökonomien. Die Wirtschaftssoziologie untersucht das Markthandeln unter dem Aspekt der sozialen, kulturellen und politischen Einbettung der Akteure. Dieser Band versammelt erstmalig in deutscher Sprache Beiträge zur soziologischen Forschung über Märkte, unter anderem von international führenden Autoren wie Olivier Godechot, Akos Rona-Tas, Donald MacKenzie, Robert Salais, Richard Swedberg und Harrison C. White."

"Die Entwicklung moderner Gesellschaften wird durch die Dynamik des Zusammenwirkens von Märkten und marktkorrigierenden Institutionen, von Wirtschaft und Politik bestimmt. Wirtschaftlicher Erfolg, soziale Ordnung, politische Stabilität hängen wesentlich von ihrem Zusammenspiel ab. Die Steuerung gesellschaftlicher Prozesse setzt daher ein Verstehen des Zusammenwirkens von offenen Märkten und sozialen Institutionen voraus. In diesem Band werden die Spannungen zwischen demokratischer Selbstbestimmung und wirtschaftlicher Eigendynamik analysiert anhand von Fragen wie: Bedroht die Globalisierung koordinierte Marktwirtschaften? Wie überlebensfähig ist das "Modell Deutschland"? Was sind die spezifischen Probleme konservativer Wohlfahrtsstaaten? Wie wandeln sich soziale Institutionen? Wie wandeln sich Staat-Verbände-Beziehungen? Wer zügelt den Kapitalismus?"

"Capitalism is an economic and social order oriented toward the future. In this paper, I describe the unfolding of the temporal order of capitalism and relate it to the restless dynamism of capitalism we have observed since the Industrial Revolution. Since the future is open, actors are confronted with the uncertainty of the outcomes of their decisions. What can expectations be under conditions of uncertainty? To answer this question, I introduce the notion of fictional expectations which can be used to describe decisions made under conditions of an open and uncertain future. In the paper's penultimate section, I apply the concept of fictional expectations to the analysis of four crucial processes of capitalism: money and credit, investments, innovation, and consumption. The main thrust of the paper is that in order to understand economic action in capitalism, actors' perceptions of the future need to take center stage. Not only "history matters," but also the "future matters."

"Political economy and economic sociology have developed in relative isolation from each other. While political economy focuses largely on macrophenomena, economic sociology focuses on the level of social interaction in the economy. The paper argues that economic sociology can provide a microfoundation of political economy beyond rational actor theory and behavioral economics. Based on a discussion of what I call the four Cs of capitalism (credit, commodification, creativity, and competition), I argue that macroeconomic outcomes depend on the "contingent expectations" actors have in decision situations. Expectations are based on the indeterminate and therefore contingent interpretation of the situations actors face. This shifts attention to the "management of expectations" as a crucial element of economic activity and to the institutional, political, and cultural foundations of expectations. The dynamics of capitalist development are precarious because they hinge on the creation of expectations conducive to economic growth."

"The article provides an overview of the state of the art of sociological research on price formation. The dominant trait of the sociological approach to prices is to understand price formation not as the outcome of individual preferences but as the result of the social and political forces operating within the market field. The article proceeds from the concept of market fields and is organized around the three dominant approaches in economic sociology: the network approach, the institutional approach and the cultural approach."

"Illegal markets differ from legal markets in many respects. Although illegal markets have economic significance and are of theoretical importance, they have been largely ignored by economic sociology. In this article we propose a categorization for illegal markets and highlight reasons why certain markets are outlawed. We perform a comprehensive review of the literature to characterize illegal markets along the three coordination problems of value creation, competition, and cooperation. The article concludes by appealing to economic sociology to strengthen research on illegal markets and by suggesting areas for future empirical research. "

"Starting from the assumption that decision situations in economic contexts are characterized by fundamental uncertainty, the paper argues that the decision-making of intentionally rational actors is anchored in fictions. "Fictionality" in economic action is the inhabitation in the mind of an imagined future state of the world and the beliefs in causal mechanisms leading to this future state. Actors are motivated in their actions by the imagined future and organize their activities based on these mental representations. Since these representations are not confined to empirical reality, fictionality is also a source of creativity in the economy. Fictionality opens up a way to an understanding of the microfoundations of the dynamics of the economy. The paper develops the notion of fictional expectations and applies it to investments, consumption and money. The last part relates the notion of fiction to calculation and social macrostructures as two other devices of decision-making and hints at the relevance of fictionality for the macrodynamics of capitalism."

"The paper takes a theoretical look at the current financial and economic crisis, drawing on existing theories on crises of capitalism. I develop the thesis that the theories of 'ungovernability' and 'late capitalism' were wrong in locating the origins of crises in contemporary capitalism only indirectly in the economy. The theory of late capitalism, however, rightfully pointed out that the state cannot reduce its influence over the economy without endangering the functioning of markets themselves. This is due less, however, to the difficulty of maintaining loyalty, i.e. political support for the capitalist system than to the more immediate challenge of sustaining the preconditions for the system's economic viability. Today, a theory of the crises of capitalism must devote much more attention to the intrasystemic preconditions of the economic system.

Der Beitrag reflektiert theoretisch die gegenwärtige Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrise, wobei die Ausführungen im Zusammenhang mit bestehenden Krisentheorien stehen. Meine These ist, dass die Krisentheorien der 'Unregierbarkeit' und des 'Spätkapitalismus' darin falsch lagen, den Ausgangspunkt von Krisen nur noch indirekt im Feld der Ökonomie zu verorten; die Theorie des Spätkapitalismus lag jedoch richtig in der Annahme, dass der Staat seine Steuerungsansprüche nicht reduzieren könne, ohne die Funktionsfähigkeit des Marktes selbst zu gefährden. Dabei geht es aber weniger um das Problem der Sicherung von Massenloyalität und damit um die politische Unterstützung des kapitalistischen Wirtschaftssystems als vielmehr sehr viel direkter um dessen ökonomische Bestandsvoraussetzungen. Eine Krisentheorie des Kapitalismus muss heute viel stärker die intrasystemischen Funktionsvoraussetzungen des kapitalistischen Wirtschaftssystems berücksichtigen."