Betting on Everything: Money, Markets, and Uncertainty

Dozent/in	Prof. Dr. Adam Hayes
Veranstaltungsart	Hauptseminar
Code	HS261595
Semester	Herbstsemester 2026
Durchführender Fachbereich	Soziologie
Studienstufe	Bachelor
Termin/e	wöchentlich (Mi), ab 16.09.2026, 16:15 - 18:00 Uhr, 3.B57
Umfang	2 Semesterwochenstunden
Inhalt	A graded Pokémon card sealed in a plastic slab. A stock that rises because a subreddit decided it should. A crypto token whose only collateral is the hope that someone else will buy it later. A prediction-market contract on whether it will rain in London on Saturday. These objects can look like jokes about value, yet people pour real money, attention, status, and hope into them. This seminar treats speculation as ordinary social action rather than as a market pathology or a failure of individual reason. Speculation is a way of relating to an uncertain future, and the forms it takes are patterned by culture, networks, platforms, and the devices that make a future tradable. Our recurring question: what makes speculative value socially durable, even when everyone knows it might vanish? After building a conceptual toolkit (valuation, liquidity, fictional expectations, market devices, financialization), we test it on contemporary cases—sealed collectibles, meme stocks, crypto and memecoins, NFTs, prediction markets, sports betting—and collect data on them directly. The course is open to ISA students and assumes no prior background in finance or economic sociology.
Sprache	Englisch
Anmeldung	***Important*** In order to earn credits, you must register for the course via the UniPortal. Registration is possible from two weeks before to two weeks after the start of the semester. Registration and deregistration are no longer possible after this period. You can find the exact registration details here: http://www.unilu.ch/ksf/semesterdaten
Leistungsnachweis	Aktive Teilnahme:: Students • attend regularly and come prepared on the obligatory readings (˜90 min per text); • lead at least one session with a short input and facilitate the discussion; • keep a running "speculation dossier" (three to four short field observations linked to seminar concepts); • take part in a small group research project on one speculative market, presented in the final session.
Abschlussform / Credits	Aktive Teilnahme (Details siehe 'Leistungsnachweis') / 4 Credits
Kontakt	adam.hayes@unilu.ch