Jessica Fischer is a lecturer and researcher in Literary and Cultural Studies. She studied English, History of Art, European Cultural Studies, and Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Freiburg, the Freie Universität Berlin, and the University College London. At Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, she wrote her doctoral thesis entitled Agency. The Entrepreneurial Self in Narratives of Transformation. Her research involves Cultural Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Postclassical Narratology, Social Philosophy and Anthropology.
Gesa Stedman is professor of British culture and literature and the Director of the Centre for British Studies at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. She has edited a large number of special issues, e.g. for The Journal of the Study of British Cultures, as well as edited collections, most recently on Brexit and the Arts.

Frontmatter 1
Table of Contents 5
Introduction 7
Why Imagined Economies? 17
The Rise and Decline of Doux Commerce: Change of Experience and Change of Perception 35
The Emotional Economies of Colonial Capitalism and Its Legacies 55
Imagining Money 79
Beneath and Beyond the City: The Multiple Faces of British Finance 101
A Nation of Shopkeepers? The Idealised High Street in Brexit Britain 119
The New Democratic Economy: An Imaginary and Real Alternative 139
Imaginary Economies: Narratives for the 21st Century 157
Authors 175