Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of figures -- Notes on contributors -- Acknowledgements -- 1 The lure of possible futures: on speculative research -- PART I Speculative propositions -- Introduction: speculative propositions -- 2 The wager of an unfinished present: notes on speculative pragmatism -- 3 Speculative research, temporality and politics -- 4 Situated speculation as a constraint on thought -- PART II Speculative lures -- Introduction: speculative lures -- 5 Pluralities of action, a lure for speculative thought -- 6 Doing speculation to curtail speculation -- 7 Retrocasting: speculating about the origins of money -- PART III Speculative techniques -- Introduction: speculative techniques -- 8 Sociology's archive: Mass-Observation as a site of speculative research -- 9 Developing speculative methods to explore speculative shipping: mail art, futurity and empiricism -- 10 Creating idiotic speculators: disaster cosmopolitics in the sandbox -- 11 2Sweet2Kill: speculative research and contributory action -- PART IV Speculative implications -- Introduction: speculative implications -- 12 On Isabelle Stengers' 'cosmopolitics': a speculative adventure -- 13 Aesthetic experience, speculative thought and civilized life -- 14 The lure of the possible: on the function of speculative propositions -- Afterword: thinking with outrageous propositions -- Index