Book Review: The Future of Futures. The Time of Money in Financing and Society

Abstract

Elena Esposito is an Italian sociologist working mainly from the perspective of Luhmannian systems theory, particularly with themes related to the temporal dynamics of modern society and notably the problem of linking present activities with a future unknown. Most of her publications (mainly in Italian and German) are about the form and ordering of time (as in fashion, remembrance, reform, innovation and prediction). In this book (first published in Italian in 2009), she sets about explaining no less than the complexities, irrationality and paradoxes produced by the ‘alchemy of finance’ (George Soros) in terms of time.