Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou is the author of Speculative Communities: Living with Uncertainty in a Financialized World (University of Chicago Press, 2022). He is Director of the Centre for Capitalism Studies at University College London, and Director of UCL’s Sociology Programme. He serves on the Editorial Board of the British Journal of Sociology. His current book project (under advance contract with MIT Press) is a history of ideas tracing the role of market distortion and financial alchemy in the emergence of ‘post-truth’ capitalism. In 2024/25 Aris will be Research Chair of the programme Futures of Capitalism at The New Institute in Hamburg.
Speculative Communities investigates the financial world’s influence on the social imagination, unravelling its radical effects on our personal and political lives.
“A masterful critique of the financialisation of everyday life. A novel and exciting academic contribution, and a critical reference point for those seeking to organise in a world defined by the logic of speculation”.
— Grace Blakeley, author of Stolen
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Upcoming book —
Real Fake: An intellectual history of distortion
What is the relationship between magic and finance? How did alchemy become a defining feature of our financialized world? And how does market-driven distortion produce the elusive realities, cosmologies and conspiracies of modern capitalism?
[ Image of ‘financial alchemy’ generated by Aris K-A through Open AI ]