Crisis, Austerity and Everyday Life ― Living in a Time of Diminishing Expectations

Will austerity ever end? This book argues that the project of austerity is designed to indefinitely change political, social and economic life. Bhattacharyya says that we are living through a time in which disproportionate attention is paid to an abstracted idea of the 'economy', leading to greater disengagement from mainstream politics. The outcome: an overall diminishing of expectations, in all areas of life, with long-standing techniques of exclusion being extended to more and more of the population. Over time, Crisis, Austerity and Everyday Life shows, we are encouraged to expect less and less. The question, of course, is what might come next?

In this timely and insightful overview, Bhattacharrya reviews and questions a range of interdisciplinary debates central to the topic of austerity, including the character of the project of austerity and its cultural performance; the impact of economistic thinking; the degradation of the space of democratic politics; the institutionalization of despair as an active technique of governmental discipline; the extension of the practices of the racial state to capture greater proportions of the population; and a rethinking of the role of reproductive labour in austere times and what this suggests for all of our futures.

Gargi Bhattacharyya is Professor of Sociology at the University of East London, UK. Her published works include: Tales of Dark Skinned Women (1998); Race and Power (with Stephen Small and John Gabriel, 2001); Sexuality and Society (2002); Traffick (2005); Dangerous Brown Men (2008); and Ethnicities and Values (2009).