Cultural Life of Risk and Innovation

How did "e;innovation"e; become something to strive for, an end in itself? And how did "e;the market"e; come to be thought of as the space of innovation? This edited volume provides the first historical examination of how innovations are conceived, marketed, navigated and legitimated from a global perspective that highlights contrasting experiences. These experiences include: colonial "e;projecting"e; in the Dutch New Netherlands, trust networks in the early US securities market, female investors during the Financial Revolution, life insurance in nineteenth-century France, "e;bubbles"e; and trusts in 1920s Shanghai, government regulation of the pre-Revolutionary stock market and the checkered success of today's bit-coin technology. By discussing these diverse contexts together, this volume provides a pathbreaking reconsideration of market and business activities in light of both the techniques and the emotional vectors that infuse them.