{"id":252131,"date":"2022-06-10T20:32:33","date_gmt":"2022-06-10T20:32:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=252131"},"modified":"2022-06-10T20:32:33","modified_gmt":"2022-06-10T20:32:33","slug":"crypto-and-the-rise-of-speculative-communities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2022\/06\/10\/crypto-and-the-rise-of-speculative-communities\/","title":{"rendered":"Crypto and the rise of &#8220;speculative communities&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Max Read, a former editor-in-chief of Gawker, writes a newsletter called Read Max, and in one of his latest editions <a href=\"https:\/\/maxread.substack.com\/p\/web3-as-a-speculative-community\">he talks about a book he read<\/a> and reviewed, called &#8220;Speculative Communities: Living With Uncertainty in a Financialized World,&#8221; by a London-based sociologist named Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou. It&#8217;s about more than just crypto, but it explains a lot about the rise of that kind of niche community:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>Where prediction once reigned, speculation now dominates. You can see this at the most literal level in the rise of gig-platform apps like Uber, where the once-simple acts of hailing or driving a cab become adventures in speculation\u2014wagers on whether the price of a ride will rise or fall in the next five minutes\u2014but you can also see it on a discursive level in social media, where users stake out speculative positions (called \u201ctakes\u201d) on volatile reputational marketplaces. You even see it, Komporozos-Athanasiou argues, in the success of \u201cpopulist\u201d politicians and initiatives from the Greek bailout referendum to Brexit to Trump, votes for which can be understood as speculative wagers on \u201cpossible, yet uncertain, outcomes\u201d<\/p><p><em>[H]omo economicus<\/em>\u00a0is an isolated individual, while\u00a0<em>homo speculans<\/em>, in Komporozos-Athanasiou\u2019s formulation, is a member of a \u201cspeculative community.\u201d The delegitimation of neoliberal reason not only increases volatility, it also undermines the previous regime\u2019s insistence on atomized individuals and family units. \u201cStruggles of speculation and insurance,\u201d then, \u201care experienced more intensely\u00a0<em>but also more collectively<\/em>.\u201d Here\u00a0<em>Speculative Communities\u00a0<\/em>draws on Benedict Anderson\u2019s famous study of the origins of nationalism,\u00a0<em>Imagined Communities<\/em>, which argued that the collapse of\u00a0<em>anciens r\u00e9gimes<\/em>\u00a0around the world and the rise of print-media capitalism in the wake of the industrial revolution created new uncertainties around which the \u201cimagined communities\u201d of nationalism could coalesce.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div class=\"syndication-links\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Max Read, a former editor-in-chief of Gawker, writes a newsletter called Read Max, and in one of his latest editions he talks about a book he read and reviewed, called &#8220;Speculative Communities: Living With Uncertainty in a Financialized World,&#8221; by a London-based sociologist named Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou. It&#8217;s about more than just crypto, but it explains &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2022\/06\/10\/crypto-and-the-rise-of-speculative-communities\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Crypto and the rise of &#8220;speculative communities&#8221;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crsspst_to_mathewingramblogwordpresscom":false,"mf2_syndication":[],"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-252131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=252131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/252131\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=252131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=252131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=252131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}