Review Essay: Adventures in Financeland

An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets by Donald MacKenzie. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 2006, ISBN 0262134608. Pages: 377. 25.95 (hbk) Out of the Pits: Traders and Technology from Chicago to London by Caitlin Zaloom. Chicago, IL, University of Chicago Press, 2006. ISBN 0226978133. Pages: 224. 18.50 (hbk) Do Economists Make Markets? On the Performativity of Economics by Donald MacKenzie, Fabian Muniesa and Lucia Siu. Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, 2007. ISBN 0691130163. Pages: 373. 35.00 (hbk

Jumpstarting the future with Fredric Jameson: Reflections on capitalism, science fiction and Utopia

This paper turns around the key concern that it has become almost impossible to imagine a form of the future that is neither a prolongation of what already exists nor its apocalyptic demise. In trying to find ways of reconceiving the future in a more productive fashion, the paper relies heavily on Fredric Jameson?s work. Jameson worries that the traditional realist novel, which has featured so prominently in discussions of ?literature? in the field of organization studies, has committed itself far too readily to what he terms ?ontological realism?: the deliberate confusion of that which is meaningful with that which exists. He therefore explores the potential of Science Fiction (SF), and in particular radical SF from the 1960s and 1970s, for figuring a break with a hollowed-out present. This is achieved, for example, by transforming our own present into the past of something yet to come. It is as if Walter Benjamin?s angel of history would stand in an imaginary future with its face turned back towards our present. Such revelatory time-slips find their clearest expression in the novels of Philip K Dick, and it is to them that this paper will turn when working through some concrete examples

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Finance

Review of Brett Scott (2013). The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: Hacking the Future of Money. London: Pluto Press. (PB, pp. 262, �11.50, ISBN 9780745333502

Organisational Change and Discourse: Hegemony, Resistance and Reconstitution

The article considers the discourse surrounding culture change programmes in two British manufacturing organisations. The analysis of organisational discourse is pursued as a means of revealing the indeterminacy of organisational experiences and the problems inherent to the introduction of generic change approaches such as TQM (Total Quality Management) and BPR (Business Process Reengineering). An examination of the discourse used in the case companies will show an intricate set of structural, cultural, economic, and personal pressures passing through the TQM/BPR concepts. Organisational actors from all hierarchical levels are shown to be ?disciplined? by the change discourse to various degrees. Three discursive movements are examined: the imposition/ introduction of a hegemonic discourse, the resistance to this discourse, and the appropriation of the discourse by line managers to reconstitute their actions and those of senior management. The outcome of these movements is a contested set of stories, full of contradiction and ambiguity. If the change discourse is to be embodied in local practices it cannot remain purely monologic, but has to engage in a dialogic relationship with existing and emerging concepts and meaning

'Of No Interest Except in Economic Terms': Benjamin on Business

Review of Radio Benjamin by Walter Benjamin. London, Verso, 2014, ISBN 978178168575

Myths of a Near Past: Envisioning Finance Capitalism anno 2007

This paper seeks to extend earlier work on particular features and manifestations of capitalism (De Cock et al., 2001). Our 2001 Myths of a Near Future paper offered ephemera readers a large depository of images concerning the New Economy. Eight years later our focus has shifted to Finance Capitalism. Over the course of the year 2007 we cut out and scanned 81 ads placed by financial institutions in the Financial Times. Our analysis of these aims to provide a sense of how the financial world ?showed up? in this pivotal year, whilst illustrating how its representations were interwoven with fantasy throughout. We also hope that the ensemble of images associated with the paper will be creatively reassembled by its readers and possibly provide a useful teaching aid