Dear colleagues,
*Apologies for cross-posting*
Please find bellow the CFP for an AAA session titled: Austerity, the state and common sense in Europe.
Organizers: Patrícia Matos & Antonio Maria Pusceddu
University of Barcelona,
ERC Researchers, Grassroots Economics Project
Abstract:
This panel seeks to understand the reshaping of people’s practices and worldviews in the wake of the austerity project in Europe. We want to address the development of austerity as a joint economic, ideological and political project. Gramsci defined “common sense” as “a widespread conception of life and morality” tied to the concrete experiences and practices of earning a livelihood within a particular structure of capital accumulation. We think that this concept, and its political counterpart of “hegemony”, will help us explain the different national expressions of the recent structural adjustment measures in Europe.
Following the financial crisis of 2008, transnational institutions of governance, such as the International Monetary Fund or the European Commission, and European states favored the theory of “expansionary austerity” as the main policy towards economic recovery. The theory rests on two claims: (1) that states should concentrate on fiscal consolidation through extensive government budget cuts and (2) that this will stimulate private consumption and investment even in the short term. In contrast, many reports by mainstream and heterodox economists alike have pointed to the contractionary effects of austerity policies, and to their harmful consequences on people’s livelihoods. In European countries, austerity has often been described as a deepening of long-term neoliberalization processes that started in the 1980s. Nevertheless, the historical and context-bound character of austerity projects together with the nature of people’s agency capabilities need to be further explored and theorized.
We invite contributors to address some of the following issues:
1. Why are people’s responses to austerity policies nationally diverse and span a wide ideological range?
2. How do citizens subject to austerity processes understand, resist or consent to policy measures that undermine their livelihood opportunities?
3. What legitimizing practices does the state mobilize to institute a widely shared vocabulary and a praxis of national austerity?
4. How does the politico-economic project of austerity manufacture a common sense about the changing relationships between the state, social groups and individuals?
The contributions of this panel seek to clarify why austerity remains, implicitly or explicitly, a pervasive political narrative and economic doctrine. We hope it will also shed light on the different impact it has in the reconfiguration of the power geometries of European states. Finally, we expect the debate to expand the theorization of austerity as a hegemonic project, capable of capturing and changing the state-form, with the aim of framing agency in a naturalized common sense of a new social order.
Keywords: Austerity, common sense, hegemony, Europe, agency, state
Don’t hesitate to contact us for any further clarification, or send an abstract (of no more than 250 words), paper title and keywords (max. 5) by 7 April 2015, to [log in to unmask] and [log in to unmask]
All the very best,
Patrícia Matos & Antonio Maria Pusceddu
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