Making Finance Legible: Speculative Fiction and the Sociology of Futures

Abstract This article is structured in two parts. The first part examines the centrality of speculation in contemporary financial capitalism and its implications for International Political Sociology (IPS). Under financialized accumulation, value derives less from material production than from projections of future worth, embedding uncertainty and precarity into everyday life. Yet IPS has paid limited attention to the (il)legibility of speculative finance and its abstractions, leaving open crucial questions about how these practices shape global power and social relations. To address this gap, the second part argues that IPS can benefit from engaging with speculative fiction. Through its imaginative and projective capacities, speculative fiction mirrors empirical social and technological trends while illuminating the interplay between individual experience and broader historical forces. It is a powerful exercise of what C. Wright Mills termed “the sociological imagination.” Drawing on William Gibson’s Pattern Recognition and Charles Stross’ Neptune’s Brood, the article shows how speculative fiction reveals the dynamics of speculative finance, exposing hidden contradictions and possibilities. Ultimately, the article suggests that for IPS to build a relevant sociology of futures in the twenty-first century, it must engage more deeply with speculative financial capitalism and incorporate speculative fiction as a tool for comprehensively analyzing social issues and historical forces.