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
