Post-crisis Louisianans speculated on institutional values rather than merely assessing risk

Evidence

For large parts of the United States, the 2008 financial crisis lowered hopes and aspirations and led to a growing sense of foreclosure of possibilities. Indeed, Hochschild observes a distinct change in the ways that her informants came to imagine their futures during that time. When grappling with the uncertain consequences of deregulated markets in their everyday lives, they did not merely (or erroneously) assess risks. Rather, they speculated on the (ethical as well as political) values of oil and petrochemical companies responsible for air and water pollution, and also on the values of the local and federal government involved in the (de)regulation of these industries. This generative and relational function of the speculative imagination is crucial here. Rather than growing apart, Louisianans mobilized that speculative imagination as a means to come together in the face of continuing “broken promises.” By turning to complex webs of mutuality found in religious congregations, in families, and in other local communities, they were able to reallocate moral responsibilities more collectively. In doing so, the idea that “we’re all in this together” helped to cement their sense of belonging to the speculative community, offering a much-needed moral anchoring for hedging their uncertain futures. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 283

Categorization

• XREF: Here’s the mechanism undergirding the claim that populists make speculative bets rather than voting against their interests — connect to Milgrom’s repeated-trust game and the subjective risk-normalization the reader wanted to trace.
• SEED: Possible essay: ‘Hedging broken promises: how solidarity-as-social-insurance replaced state provision for contemporary populists.’
• SHARE: The ‘we’re all in this together’ as moral anchoring for hedging uncertain futures is a point to raise with anyone working on subjective precarity and faith communities.