Title: Ontology of Finance
Guest editors: Gloria Sansò (University at Buffalo) and Barry Smith (University at Buffalo)
Deadline for submission: 30 June 2022
One famous scene in The Wolf of Wall Street (2013) is the dialogue between the young Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) and the expert trader Mark Hanna (Matthew McConaughey). Hanna is complaining that the stock market is unpredictable; it’s “fugazi … it’s fairy dust. It doesn’t exist. It’s never landed. It is not matter. It’s not on the element chart. It’s not real”. But the fact that something is unpredictable and non-physical does not imply that it does not exist. On the other hand, its unpredictability, non-physicality, and the fact that the stock market trend is largely determined by investors’ beliefs, do make its nature difficult to grasp.
This special issue of Rivista di Estetica aims to explore the financial sector from an ontological point of view. While the ontology of money has been extensively studied, few scholars have focused on the stock market and, more generally, on those entities belonging to the investment landscape. Matters are made more complicated by the fact that the financial sector is characterized by an ever-increasing use of digital technology, including software elements that trade in the market themselves. We believe that a careful study of this phenomenon may help us better to understand the role of artificial agents in the social world.
Topics and research questions include (but are not limited to):
- The nature of financial instruments, financial risk, financial markets
- The nature of buying, selling and investing
- The problem of performativity in the financial world
- What is the difference between price and value?
- Are the orders placed by an automated trading system social acts?
- What is the role of documents in finance?
- Can the financial market be fair?
Instructions: Articles must be written in English and should not exceed 40.000 characters, notes and blank-spaces included.
In order to submit your paper, please register and login to: http://labont.it/estetica/index.php/rivistadiestetica/login.
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For further information, mail to: gsanso@buffalo.edu
Webpages: https://labont.it/labont/rivista-di-estetica/https://journals.openedition.org/estetica/