Rowman & Littlefield International
Pages: 228
•
Trim: 6 1/4 x 9 1/2
978-1-78348-193-4 • Hardback • September 2017 • $115.00 • (£75.00)
978-1-78348-195-8 • eBook • September 2017 • $35.95 • (£24.95)
Kirsten Forkert is a lecturer in Media Theory at Birmingham City University. Her research looks at the politics of cultural work and education. Her PhD thesis explored the conditions experienced by freelance artists in London and Berlin and serves as the basis for her first book, 'Artistic Lives' (Ashgate, 2013). She has also published on media art, activism, and the globalisation of education in several journals and edited collections. Prior to academia, Kirsten was active as a media artist, curator and critic. She has been involved in community media, media art and activist projects, including 'Video In' in Vancouver, Canada, and 'Democracy Now!' and the '16beaver Collective' in New York.
Introduction: Tightening Our Belts / Chapter 1: Austerity and the Appeal of the Past / Chapter 2: Authoritarian Populism, Traditionalism and Austerity / Chapter 3: The Mediatisation of Austerity and the Case of Benefits Street / Chapter 4: Immigration, Austerity and the Welfare State / Chapter 5: Austere creativity, community and impasses around the welfare state / Chapter 6: Trade Union Activism after the 2010 Student Protests / Chapter 7: Spaces of Solidarity / Conclusion: From Austerity to Brexit and Trump, and the Politics of the “Ordinary”
This is a wonderfully clear-sighted and necessary appraisal of how ‘austerity’ is not simply a series of policies but a cultural sensibility and public mood. Kirstin Forkert’s astute and multifaceted account simultaneously helps us understand how destructive austerity politics are garnering support whilst investigating and imagining ways they are - and could be - addressed and combated in practice.
— Jo Littler, Reader and Director of Research, Department of Sociology, City, University of London
This is an interesting and important book that helps to illuminate the particular constellation of ideas, values and practices that have marked the decade since financial crisis. Examining a range of cultural sites from ‘poverty porn’ television, to ‘inspirational’ messages, and from immigration policy to local activism against library closures, Kirsten Forkert makes a compelling case for considering austerity not only as an economic programme, nor simply an ideological position, but also as a psychosocial phenomenon built around mobilising affect to create a ‘public mood’. Thoughtful and inventive, this book will be of interest to anyone who cares about contemporary politics (in Britain).
— Rosalind Gill, Professor of Cultural and Social Analysis at City, University of London
Returns to analyses of the appeal of Thatcherism in the 1980s and applies this to the present austerity context.
Draws on Foucauldian theories of biopolitics and the cultural politics of emotions
Based on qualitative research on anti-austerity campaigns in order to provide a concrete, on-the-ground sense of the possibilities, challenges and contradictions they face.