Shackle argued economic decisions stem from imagination, not reason alone

Evidence

Economist George Shackle singled out this neglect of the imagination as a major drawback in modern theories of political economy. Shackle argued that imagination offers a way out of “rational choice” dilemmas when faced with uncertain futures: “economic expectations are not primarily the product of reason but of imagination”—a “reasoned imagination” as he called it—and hence “our decisions must be based on how we imagine the future” (Bronk 2009, 72; also see Beckert 2016). His point is especially salient because it demonstrates the need to shift our attention away from deconstructing homo economicus and turn it instead to conceptualizing homo speculans. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 137

Categorization

• XREF: Shackle’s ‘reasoned imagination’ and Beckert’s ‘imagined futures’ are the intellectual ancestors of the book’s homo speculans concept, tracing the causal chain the reader needs.
• QUESTION: Beckert 2016 is invoked here — worth pulling that source to compare imagined futures with speculative populism claims.