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

Abstract

As 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.

Keywords::

• time in finance
• industrial revolutions
• proximal future
• future timescapes

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Donncha Kavanagh

Donncha Kavanagh is Professor of Information and Organization at UCD Business School in University College Dublin. His research interests revolve around the history of management thought, innovation and play, and the sociology of technology and markets. Further details available on his website at http://donnchakavanagh.com

Geoff Lightfoot

Geoff Lightfoot is Senior Lecturer in Accounting and Entrepreneurship at the University of Leicester School of Management. Research interests are wide-ranging, but broadly group around the exploration of aspects of representation and markets. This takes in several lines of enquiry, including deconstructing narratives of entrepreneurship and of trading (particularly within financial markets).

Simon Lilley

Simon Lilley is Professor of Information and Organisation and Head of the University of Leicester School of Management. Research interests turn around the relationships between (human) agency, technology and performance, particularly the ways in which such relationships can be understood through post-structural approaches to organization. These concerns are reflected in a continuing focus upon the use of information technologies and strategic models in organizations and he is currently pursuing these themes through investigation of the regulation and conduct of financial and commodity derivatives trading.