Austerity impacts Flashcards
Who has brought attention to how austerity is felt?
Horton 2016 and the “everyday spaces” of austerity
How can austerity be intimate in two different ways?
- Psychosocial and corporeal
2. Household and local effects
What are the 3 main frameworks for understanding the intimate impacts of austerity?
- Ontological - inequalities + how they manifest
- Epistemological - personal connections etc
- Political - power + micropolitics, shapes other factors
What local authority was hit most by austerity?
Westminster
Beatty and Fothergill 2014
METRIC?
How intense is the North-South divide in the UK?
As bad as the inequality between East and West Germany
How has austerity been violent?
By increasing pressures on households in a patriarchal society, the state has sponsored gendered effects
(Sisters Uncut 2019)
What proportion of the population live in former industrial towns?
25% of population
(Beatty and Fothergill 2018
Why were the low unemployment statistics for former coalfields misleading in the 1990s?
Did not account for incapacity benefits and out migration
BEATTY AND FOTHERGILL DATE?
Did austerity occur in isolation?
No, built on existing inequalities created by neoliberalism and deindustrialisation
What is the problem with the levelling up agenda?
- The money will not go towards reversing the impacts of deindustrialisation
- Places which need the money won’t receive it
Beatty 2022
Who has highlighted that life expectancy has plateaued?
Marmot 2020; Dorling 2017 since 2010
How do “unemployment deniers” (Varoufakis 2013) link to the contemporaneous return of “poor laws”?
- Individuals should be flexible when it comes to wages
- If not accepting lower wages, it is their fault
- People need to be disciplined in workhouses or through uni credit to become workers
How does Foucault’s (1975) “let die, make live” operate with austerity?
- More deaths because of austerity (Dorling 2017)
- Fewer people seen to be worthy of being kept alive (state welfare is expensive!)
- A return of second-class poor citizens compared to wealthy who are able to live longer
(Fassin 2009)
Why are work programs during austerity significant?
Recreates workhouses - activities are tracked
Jeff’s story; Strong 2020
How does Katz’ (1999) time-space expansion relate to Harvey’s time-space compression?
- Compression of capital flows linked to expansion of experiences of modernity
- Minority experience compression, whilst the forgotten majority experience expansion
What case study exemplifies Foucault’s (1975) “Let die”?
Grenfell Tower
See Cooper + Whyte, 2018
How is imagining austerity linked to imagery?
Imagining is linked to imaging austerity and how representations affect discourse
Are narratives always powerful?
Sontag (2004) argues that they are limited compared to photographs which “haunt us”
What is poverty pornography?
A voyeuristic and fetish view of the poor
How did Benefits Street depoliticise poverty?
Made it look as though claimants were on benefits because of their own wrongdoing, not because of structural causes
Strong 2014
What is a good example of “haunting” images (Sontag 2004)?
Food and hunger (Vernon 2007)
Links to food banks
Why does conspicuous consumption exacerbate debt?
People feel an emotional obligation to maintain consumerist practices for children (Strong 2020), even though it will land them in more debt
What actually is austerity?
- Fiscal policy with more tax
OR - A socioeconomic condition of living without all needs being met or “without comfort”
Cambridge Dictionary definitions
Why does a reliance on asset-based community development (ABCD) enhance inequality during austerity?
Is this for certain?
- ABCD is implemented more and better where there is more social capital to begin with
- Thus favours wealthy areas
(MacLeod & Emejuju 2014) - only speculated by volunteers. Hard to tell for certain
How much income did residents in Middlesbrough and Hartlepool lose because of austerity leading up to 2016?
£720 and £710 lost per annum, respectively
5th and 6th place nationally
What has the local government in Tees Valley done to try and reverse industrial decline?
Introduce more enterprise, leading to a brain drain
How does citizenship interact with asset-based approaches during austerity?
- Social capital is utilised to help struggling communities during times of adversity
- Less secure and more uneven than state support
Coote 2011
Do asset-based solutions to austerity only overlook underlying structural issues?
No, they also overlook how poverty and inequality are socially embedded in civil society - through food banks (for eg)
Coote 2011
What is the one less well-articulated idea presented by Beatty and Fothergill 2017 on economic failure as the main reason why people are dependent on the state?
The trade deficit argument is less clear…
Beatty and Fothergill 2017
How long do food parcels from food banks last?
3 days (Twizwell 2021; Trussell Trust 2021)
What proportion of food banks are run by the Trussell Trust?
90% (Trussell Trust 2021)
How has unemployment changed in former industrial towns since the 1980s?
- Employment has increased (still quite low)
- Rate of increase 7x slower compared to London
Beatty and Fothergill 2018
What percentage of children are in poverty in Tees Valley?
25% (Redcar and Cleveland Council DATE?)
How much has Tees Valley welfare been cut?
33.4%, compared to 29% national average, only 15% in Surrey
Middlesbrough Council 2018
How much evidence is there of food banks unevenly provisioning parcels?
- No clear evidence
- Some evidence that supply of food does not meet demand in the areas where cuts and unemployment are high
- More pressure in these areas
Loopstra et al 2015
What is the problem with implementing a universal basic income?
- Alberti et al 2018 advocates
- Does not account for underlying structural causes of poverty
- Coote 2011 suggests a shorter working week to boost employment
What is a good quote to summarise the economic failure of austerity?
Austerity is “a medicine that sought to cure the disease by killing the patient”
Cavero and Poinasamy 2013
What is an important aspect to consider when it comes to the impacts of austerity?
They are gendered (Murphy 2019)
Are public spaces always publicly accessible?
No, there could be temporal or diurnal changes in access
Nissen 2008
Why is the privatisation of publicly-owned space unsurprising during neoliberal austerity?
Lefebvre highlighted that publicly owned spaces offer a surplus capital to be drawn upon
(Zieleniec 2018)
Why is the deterioration of public space significant?
Provides an incentive to privatise it to make a profit (Zieleniec 2018)
Why is private space sometimes commercialised?
To extract more profit from it
Zieleniec 2018
What are “POPS”?
Privately-Owned Public Spaces
See Nissen 2008
What are two fundamental aspects of truly public spaces?
- Inclusive
- Freely accessible
What is “urbicide”?
- The deterioration of urban areas because of the privatisation of spaces
- Deterioration of civic life
- Intentional
Coward 2008
What is the entomology behind “urbicide”?
Used to describe the intentional destruction of urban areas during the Bosnian war
Coward 2008
Are all public space in urban areas utilitarian?
No, can include creative spaces, including Museums
See Carmona et al 2019
What is ironically occuring in public spaces during austerity?
Private management of public spaces - ideologically driven, even though it is costly
Why are cuts to transport services during austerity a problem?
- Exacerbates inequalities
- Unable to get to services and amenities
- 15% cut nationally (Department for transport 2014)
Why is the 15% cut in transport expenditure misleading?
- It is the national cut
- Local cuts are more intense (seen as a an expirable public asset - Veeneman et al 2015)
- Hence poorer local authorities hit harder
- Not ring-fenced locally
Why are fare increases because of cuts to public transport a problem?
- Impacts those already feeling the squeeze with austerity (Veeneman et al 2015)
- Disproportionate affect on women who need to make more journeys by public transport
On top of greater cuts to poorer areas!
What could a long-term impact of transport cuts be?
- Rural areas exhibiting more intense inequalities (more hypermobile rich with cars vs rural poor)
- The wealthy are able to commute to work but not the poorest… often assumed to be even…
Are all the inequalities associated with austerity plain and obvious?
No, the are hidden inequalities in the home (Gender, age etc)
Are health impacts caused always by people?
No, there are often “causes of the causes of the causes”
(Bambra 2019) - NEED TO EXPLAIN
Why is inequality especially important during Covid-19?
- Social determinants of health (Paremoer 2021)
But leads towards reduced health security for everyone during covid-19, prolongs the effects
