Financialized power struggles are won by those with greater imaginative capacity
Evidence
Yet our financialized times see the forces of these struggles intensifying, as speculation itself becomes the primary terrain of power conflicts. Those engaged in speculation are in that sense vying for power, with winners and losers decided by their capacity to deploy imaginative resources, in order to speculate with any hope of success about the future. The new divisions fan the flames of older ones between speculators and those who are speculated on. This shift originates in the growing unequal distribution of risk and debt dependencies in financialized society. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 102
Categorization
- QUESTION: Worth exploring what specific ‘imaginative resources’ mean operationally and whether any empirical work tries to measure their unequal distribution.
- SEED: The idea that the unequal distribution of imagination — not just money — now decides who wins in speculation is an article angle on financialized power.
- XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing ideas on how financial risk-inequality reshapes social relations; also to Laura Bear’s anthropology of debt cited here. — connects to: Financialized power conflicts are won by deploying imaginative resources rather than capital; Finance capitalism’s power struggles are fundamentally contests over speculative imagination — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 148; Finance capital dominates by capturing the imagination that emancipation would otherwise free — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 142 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Financialized power conflicts are won by deploying imaginative resources rather than capital
#epitomizes(0.95) - Finance capitalism’s power struggles are fundamentally contests over speculative imagination
#corroborates(0.90) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 148 - Power struggles within capitalism are simultaneously struggles over imagining the future
#corroborates(0.88) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 106 - Finance capital dominates by capturing the imagination that emancipation would otherwise free
#expands(0.80) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 142 - Speculative finance dominates by co-opting the generative worker imagination.
#contradicts(0.75) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 142 - The same creative power drives both financial capitalism and resistance to it
#expands(0.75) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 112