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The Centre for Organization and Time (COT, IOA) invites to an online seminar @bout time on:
Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology
With Liliana Doganova, Assiciate Professor at Centre de Socioilogie de I´Innovation, Mines Paris, PSL University
Abstract
The climate and ecological crisis prompts a question: have we lost our capacity to act on the future? In this talk, I propose to address this issue through the devices that compose our relationship with the future. I focus on a device that recently came under the spotlights in debates on climate change but has been entrenched in economic and policy practices for decades. This device is discounting: a technique that values all things through the flows of costs and benefits or revenues that they are likely to generate in the future, with these future flows being literally dis-counted as they are translated in the present.
Building on my recently published book Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology (Zone Books, 2024), I outline three troubles with discounting. First, is the future worth less than the present, and should it be counted or discounted? Second, does value stem from the future, and should looking to the future guide acting in the present? Third, is discounting a general form of action, which can encompass all kinds of entities and issues? I discuss these three troubles through examples drawn from the historical sociology of discounting developed in the book.
Analysing discounting as a political technology leads to exploring the links between temporality and valuation. I conclude that shifting focus from the problem of (not) knowing the future to the problem of (de)valuing the future enables us to examine afresh what acting on the future means and entails.
Brief Biography
Liliana Doganova is Associate Professor at Centre de Sociologie de l’Innovation, Mines Paris, PSL University. At the crossroads of economic sociology and STS (Science and Technology Studies), her research explores valuation practices in the economy. She is the author of Discounting the Future: The Ascendancy of a Political Technology (2024), and co-author of Capitalization: A Cultural Guide (2017). Her current research projects focus on forestry and drug pricing.
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Time and Date
November 29th, 2024,
14.00-15.30
Location
Online
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