Capitalist eschatology: Immediacy, investment, ideology
Other conference contribution, 2022

This paper presents some preliminary ideas on how to study the place of eschatology in the contemporary economy, focusing specifically on space-colonizing ambitions of US entrepreneurs such as Elon Musk. Such a study may focus on three problematics, relating to immediacy, investment, and ideology. The study of what one may call “capitalist eschatology” involves interrogating the making of alternative futures, by situating imaginaries of humanity becoming a multiplanetary species in the present realities of political economy. The authors combine STS and ethnographic method with a history of technology perspective, in order to study both the present and the long roots of the sociotechnical and economic practices and imaginaries that make up such a “eschatology”.

Author

Anna Åberg

Chalmers, Technology Management and Economics, Science, Technology and Society

Karl Palmås

Chalmers, Technology Management and Economics, Science, Technology and Society

Kristoffer Ekberg

Chalmers, Technology Management and Economics, Science, Technology and Society

STS-dagarna
Göteborg, Sweden,

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Subject Categories

Social Anthropology

History of Technology

Cultural Studies

More information

Latest update

8/9/2022 1