from Part III - Interdisciplinary Exchanges
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2022
This chapter examines the role of imagination in enabling economic actors to make sense of the world and decide how to act and the part played by metaphorical thinking and analytical imagination within the discipline of economics. It starts from the assumption that modern capitalism is a quintessentially creative and imaginative system, characterized by constant novelty and radical uncertainty. The authors argue that economic behavior is therefore necessarily guided by working fictions and, in particular, by fictional expectations that combine individual imaginaries and social narratives with calculation. Building on insights from literary theory, the chapter examines the structuring and performative role of narratives and models and concludes that market power rests with those able to make their narratives and imaginaries count. Championing a new form of narrative economics, the authors propose that economists should employ discourse analysis to read the contingent interpretations that economic actors use to navigate uncertain futures.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.