Speculative imagination is willingness to stake on future uncertainty despite scarce resources.

Evidence

My contention in the present chapter is that agrarians and lay speculators of that time developed a shared speculative imagination that came to define modern capitalism’s history of financial inclusion (and exclusion): a willingness to take a stake in the future’s uncertainty for economic and political benefit, despite a dearth of available resources and limited access to “expert knowledge.” This distinct speculative imagination heralded a new moral order that dampened ethical objections to speculation and became firmly embedded in finance capitalism by the end of World War II and the New Deal era. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 111

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core working definition of the book’s central concept, the speculative imagination.
• QUESTION: Which exact historical groups count as ‘agrarians and lay speculators’ and what alliances did they form?
• XREF: connects to: Speculation is an imaginative act confronting uncertainty via hedging and wagering — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living with…, 85