Finance past, finance future: a brief exploration of the evolution of financial practices

dc.contributor.authorKavanagh, Donncha
dc.contributor.authorLightfoot, Geoff
dc.contributor.authorLilley, Simon
dc.date.accessioned2016-06-21T15:36:30Z
dc.date.available2016-06-21T15:36:30Z
dc.date.issued2014-04-07
dc.date.updated2014-11-01T15:00:12Z
dc.description.abstractAs we work our way through the latest financial crisis, politicians seem both powerless to act convincingly and unable to craft from the welter of diverse and antagonistic narratives a coherent and convincing vision of the future. In this article, we argue that a temporal lens brings clarity to such confusion, and that thinking in terms of time and reflecting on privileged temporal structures helps to highlight underlying assumptions and distinguish different narratives from one another. We begin by articulating our understanding of temporality, and we proceed to apply this to the evolution of financial practice during different historical epochs as recently delineated by Gordon (2012). We argue that the principles of finance were effectively in place by the eighteenth century and that consequent developments are best conceptualized as phases in which one particular aspect is intensified. We find that in different historical periods, the temporal intensification associated with specific models of finance shifts, over history, from the past to the present to the future. We argue that a quite idiosyncratic understanding of the future has been intensified in the present phase, what we refer to as proximal future, and we explain how this has come to be. We then consider the ethical consequences of privileging an intensification of proximal future before mapping an alternative model centred on intensifying distal future, highlighting early signs of its potential emergence in the shadows of our present.en
dc.description.statusPeer revieweden
dc.description.versionAccepted Versionen
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen
dc.identifier.citationKavanagh, D., Lightfoot, G. and Lilley, S. (2014) 'Finance past, finance future: a brief exploration of the evolution of financial practices', Management & Organizational History, 9(2), pp.135-149. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17449359.2014.891792en
dc.identifier.doi10.1080/17449359.2014.891792
dc.identifier.endpage149en
dc.identifier.issn1744-9359
dc.identifier.issued2en
dc.identifier.journaltitleManagement & Organizational Historyen
dc.identifier.startpage135en
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/10468/2770
dc.identifier.volume9en
dc.language.isoenen
dc.publisherTaylor & Francisen
dc.rights© 2014 Taylor & Francis. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Management & Organizational History, on 07 April 2014, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/17449359.2014.891792en
dc.subjectTime in financeen
dc.subjectIndustrial revolutionsen
dc.subjectProximal futureen
dc.subjectFuture timescapesen
dc.titleFinance past, finance future: a brief exploration of the evolution of financial practicesen
dc.typeArticle (peer-reviewed)en
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