Elena Esposito

Luhmann's theory is fascinating and complex. It offers incomparably enlightening insights, references and research opportunities, but reveals its utility only after a quite high competence threshold. Using the reticular form of the glossary, this book makes the theory accessible while maintaining its complexity. Without being obstructed by knowledge gaps or by references to concepts presented elsewhere, readers inside and outside sociology get the required support to explore sociological systems theory and to engage with it. Luhmann himself, in his introduction, praises the form of the glossary to cope with the challenges of the theoretical description of our highly complex society.

This book reconstructs the dynamics of economics, beginning explicitly with the role and the relevance of time: money uses the future in order to generate present wealth. Financial markets sell and buy risk, thereby binding the future. Elena Esposito explains that complex risk management techniques of structured finance produce new and uncontrolled risks because they use a simplified idea of the future, failing to account for how the future reacts to attempts at controlling it. During the recent financial crisis, the future had already been used (through securitizations, derivatives and other tools) to the extent that we had many futures, but no open future available.

In ihrem neuen Buch geht die italienische Soziologin Elena Esposito von der Parallelität zwischen der modernen fiction und der Wahrscheinlichkeitstheorie aus, die sich beide Ende des 17. Jahrhunderts entwickelt haben. Grundthese des Buches ist, daß es sich in beiden Fällen um moderne Formen der Realitätsverdopplung handelt, die auf Veränderungen der Gesellschaft reagieren. Die fiction entwickelt sich als explizit erfundene, alternative Realität, die dennoch zum Verstehen und zur Erfahrung aller Mitglieder der Gesellschaft beiträgt. Wahrscheinlichkeit und Statistik hingegen sind auf die gegenwärtige Zukunft bezogene Fiktionen, die es erlauben, in der Gegenwart Entscheidungen zu treffen, aus denen künftige Gegenwarten entstehen - die dann andere sein werden, als man vorher dachte. Elena Esposito lehrt Soziologie an der Universität Modena e Reggio Emilia.