Afterword: Timing property as speculative agency

Abstract

Time under capitalism is charged with value, rewarding those who can pace themselves according to opportunities it opens up. Property activates them along its own temporality, whereby restraint and sacrifice in the present, for those who can afford it, makes sense in terms of future returns. A temporal agency times and exploits resources like money, credit, a stable income, and a reliable political and legal institutional environment, for relative advantage. But what happens to such agency when time is out of whack? This is the context for the property pursuits described in this Theme Section as, indeed, in most contemporary contexts. The afterword unpacks the conditions for a property-related temporal agency and its transformation into speculation.