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The time that money requires: Use of the future and critique of the present in financial valuation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2023

Fabian Muniesa  and
Liliana Doganova
Fabian Muniesa*
Affiliation:
Mines ParisTech at PSL University, France
Liliana Doganova
Affiliation:
Mines ParisTech at PSL University, France
*
Corresponding author: Fabian Muniesa, Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation, Mines ParisTech, 60 Boulevard Saint-Michel, 75006 Paris, France. Email: fabian.muniesa@mines-paristech.fr.
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Abstract

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The future is persistently considered in the sociology of finance from two divergent, problematic angles. The first approach consists in supplementing financial reasoning with an acknowledgement of the expectations that are needed in order to cope with an uncertain future and justify the viability of investment decisions. The second approach, often labelled critical, sees on the contrary in the logic of finance a negation of the future and an exacerbation of the valuation of the present. This is an impasse the response to which resides, we suggest, in considering the language of future value, which is indeed inherent to a financial view on things, as a political technology. We develop this argument through an examination of significant episodes in the history of financial reasoning on future value. We explore a main philosophical implication which consists in suggesting that the medium of temporality, understood in the dominant sense of a temporal progression inside which projects and expectations unfold, is not a condition for but rather a consequence of the idea of financial valuation.

Keywords

Financefinancial valuationtemporalityfuturecritiquephilosophy
Type
Article
Information
Finance and Society , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , 2020 , pp. 95 - 113
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits noncommercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
© 2020 The Author(s)

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