When finance became productive, scientific, and liberating: a moral history of financial speculation

TY - CHAP

T1 - When finance became productive, scientific, and liberating: a moral history of financial speculation

AU - Christiansen, Christian O.

PY - 2016/1/1

Y1 - 2016/1/1

N2 - Financial speculation has become a commonly accepted, integrated part of modern culture and everyday economic life. This, however, is in marked contrast to earlier times’ contestations of the legitimacy of financial speculation. In this chapter, Christiansen first offers methodological reflections of how morally dubious activities are legitimized or delegitimized through the dominant moral vocabularies of an age, especially the normative languages of religion, economics, natural science, and democracy. With an emphasis mainly upon US history, Christiansen then offers a historical overview of how the practice of speculation was often seen as unproductive, unscientific, and a dangerous passion in the Enlightenment period, and then redescribed as productive, scientific, and liberating towards the end of the nineteenth century.

AB - Financial speculation has become a commonly accepted, integrated part of modern culture and everyday economic life. This, however, is in marked contrast to earlier times’ contestations of the legitimacy of financial speculation. In this chapter, Christiansen first offers methodological reflections of how morally dubious activities are legitimized or delegitimized through the dominant moral vocabularies of an age, especially the normative languages of religion, economics, natural science, and democracy. With an emphasis mainly upon US history, Christiansen then offers a historical overview of how the practice of speculation was often seen as unproductive, unscientific, and a dangerous passion in the Enlightenment period, and then redescribed as productive, scientific, and liberating towards the end of the nineteenth century.

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85017639731&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1057/978-1-137-59416-7_10

DO - 10.1057/978-1-137-59416-7_10

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 978-1-137-59415-0

SP - 155

EP - 168

BT - Intellectual History of Economic Normativities

A2 - Thorup, Mikkel

PB - Palgrave Macmillan

CY - US

ER -