“Derivatives have been a transformative financial innovation but have multiplied risks and complexities. Lee and Martin make an important contribution tracing the history of derivatives, how they work, and why they are important beyond technical finance.”

Craig Calhoun, director, London School of Economics

“The idea that financial derivatives can be used to reveal new ways of framing social wealth and struggles over the distribution of that wealth is as inspired as it will be controversial. This collection of exceptional scholars from diverse disciplines may well be turning the study of finance and social change on its head.”

Dick Bryan, coauthor of Capitalism with Derivatives

“A very ambitious effort to not only understand the derivative logic of financial markets through concepts of anthropology, sociology, and philosophy but also to understand the social through the logic of the derivative. It stands out not only as a truly interdisciplinary engagement with finance but also as a reversal through which derivative logic itself is used as a theory reflecting back on the social, which allows the authors to arrive at new and curious insights into their ‘native’ disciplines. The book strikes a rare balance as a critical engagement with finance and derivatives while at the same time not simply dismissing these as just another element of ‘evil capitalism.’”

Ole Bjerg, author of Making Money and Parallax of Growth

"Eight papers present the case for an integration of the social and technical understanding of derivative finance within a single analytic and interpretive frame and use what was disclosed by the global financial crisis to show how technical knowledge of derivative finance can create a single coherent interpretive and analytic language of human possibility and well-being."

Journal of Economic Literature