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In response to the 2008 financial crisis, the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government (2010–15) under Prime Minister David Cameron set about a programme of public spending cuts resulting in a raft of austerity measures that were made concrete in the 2012 Welfare Reform Act. These policies aimed to shrink the welfare state and enacted punitive sanctions against those unable to conform to the proliferating demands of welfare conditionality. This situation created conditions of profound precarity and
5: Austerity baby I seem not to have made such a good impression when I arrived, at least not on my mother. She started keeping a baby diary on 5 July 1943, just over three months after I was born. Arrived a few days after schedule at 6.10 am Thursday. Very tiny, ugly and thin – folds of skin without any fat. Weighed 6lbs. 4ozs. She improved rapidly however – or maybe I just got more used to her, but even so when we went home (5/4/43) she wasn’t very beautiful. She gained weight very quickly & was soon looking very sweet and lovely – not only my opinion
have been increasingly unmasked in the context of substantial cut-backs, bailouts, mass unemployment and austerity measures that have characterised the post-2008, recessionary world. The ideals of a free-market economy – based on the right to make profits and amass personal wealth – have been the target of a range of anti-capitalist protests that highlight the self-serving and
This book examines the phenomenon of the rise and fall of the Irish Celtic Tiger from a cultural perspective. It looks at Ireland's regression from prosperity to austerity in terms of a society as opposed to just an economy. Using literary and cultural theory, it looks at how this period was influenced by, and in its turn influenced, areas such as religion, popular culture, politics, literature, photography, gastronomy, music, theatre, poetry and film. It seeks to provide some answers as to what exactly happened to Irish society in the past few decades of boom and bust. The socio-cultural rather than the purely economic lens it uses to critique the Celtic Tiger is useful because society and culture are inevitably influenced by what happens in the economic sphere. That said, all of the measures taken in the wake of the financial crash sought to find solutions to aid the ailing economy, and the social and cultural ramifications were shamefully neglected. The aim of this book therefore is to bring the ‘Real’ of the socio-cultural consequences of the Celtic Tiger out of the darkness and to initiate a debate that is, in some respects, equally important as the numerous economic analyses of recent times. The essays analyse how culture and society are mutually-informing discourses and how this synthesis may help us to more fully understand what happened in this period, and more importantly, why it happened.
Once held up as a 'poster child' for untrammeled capitalist globalisation, the Irish Republic has more recently come to represent a cautionary tale for those tempted to tread the same neoliberal path. The crash in the world economy had especially grave repercussions for Ireland, and a series of austerity measures has seen the country endure the most substantial 'adjustment' ever experienced in a developed society during peacetime. This book delineates the reactionary course that Ireland has followed since the ignominious demise of the Celtic Tiger. It argues that the forces of neoliberalism have employed the economic crisis they caused to advance policies that are in their own narrow interests, and that the host of regressive measures imposed since the onset of global recession has fundamentally restructured Irish society. The book discusses the mechanisms by which finance in Ireland sustains and reproduces itself, in particular how it was able to protect itself during the 2008 crisis. Property was at the centre of the second phase of the Celtic Tiger boom after US investment in manufacturing began to decline, leading to the Irish economic crash. The years since the onset of the recession in Ireland in 2008 have been characterised not by passivity and quietism but by extreme violence. In December 2009 as part of the first wave of austerity, the Community Development Project was informed that the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs proposed not to continue funding the project beyond the end of 2009.
2 Temporalities of austerity ‘You have to keep moving in spite of everything’1 It was an early morning in October 2011, and I was walking through the Central Market to Riga’s unemployment office. The market was bustling as always, despite the fact that Latvians were still coping with the aftermath of the economic crisis. The effects of the crisis were visible in the public space: there were fewer people and cars on the streets and more closed-down shops and restaurants. Instead, little cafes were popping up one after another in the centre of the city where
1 Ireland under austerity: an introduction to the book Colin Coulter #tbscitwiwtat In the closing days of October 2013, Dublin hosted a major gathering at which technology corporations at various stages of development exhibited their wares and explored investment opportunities. Although only in its fourth year, the Web Summit had grown at a remarkable rate and was now capable of attracting ‘9834 attendees from 97 countries around the world’.1 The centrepiece of the two-day event was an informal roundtable discussion of which the undoubted star was the web
it to come undone was the party’s response to the coalition government’s austerity project. When Labour committed itself to austerity something historic occurred: working-class attachment to the institutional arrangements of the British state began to break apart. As the crisis of representation deepened further, working-class voters across Britain went in search of alternatives. The consequences of this
11 Marisol García Cities under economic austerity: the return of citizenship claims Citizenship is the engine for the creation of spaces for collective action when people’s life chances have been undermined and urban societies experience social and political tensions. Low wages and unemployment challenge social citizenship and so do the diminishing economic and social entitlements of workers. Historically the first two – wages and unemployment benefits – were the battlefield of industrial and social citizenship. But the other two gradually became incorporated
‘We feel the crisis on our skin’ was often used by female residents of a low-income neighbourhood in Thessaloniki, a city in northern Greece, to sum up their experiences of austerity. This popular phrase described the way austerity was lived, perceived and objected to by the residents as a form of daily crisis. It was a characteristic way through which