This book examines the formation of globalized resistance to neoliberal capitalism in 1999 and explores why there has been little progress in creating a coherent alternative.

Provides researchers with a novel methodological tool to study interactions between governments, challengers, and third-party actors.

Empire is one of the oldest forms of political organisation and has dominated societies in all parts of the world. Yet, despite the emergence of nation-states in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and the apparent end of empire with the breakup of European colonial regimes and the Soviet Union in the twentieth century, empire remains powerful in the modern world. The EUs accession policies, the United States War on Terror, Chinas economic developments in Africa, among others, draw accusations of imperial agendas. Empire is no stranger to crisis but, in recent years, the effects of global austerity have forced states, both powerful and weak, to adapt, with varying degrees of success and failure. The confusions, contradictions, and contestations which emerge from imperial crisis point to a vital question how is Austerity changing Empire and how will this shape tomorrows world?This book was published as a special issue of Global Discourse.

Much of the critical discussion of the European political economy and the Eurozone crisis has focused upon a sense that solidaristic achievements built up during the post-war period are being continuously unravelled. Whilst there are many reasons to lament the trajectory of change within Europe’s political economy, there are also important developments, trends and processes which have acted to obstruct, hinder and present alternatives to this perceived trajectory of declining social solidarity. These alternatives have tended to be obscured from view, in part as a result of the conceptual approaches adopted within the literature. Drawing from examples across the EU, this book presents an alternative narrative and explanation for the development of Europe’s political economy and crisis, emphasising the agency of what are typically considered subordinate (and passive) actors. By highlighting patterns of resistance, disobedience and disruption it makes a significant contribution to a literature that has otherwise been more concerned to understand patterns of heightened domination, exploitation, inequality and neoliberal consolidation. It will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

Austerity was presented as the antidote to sluggish economies, but it has had far-reaching effects on jobs and employment conditions. With an international team of editors and authors from Europe, North America and Australia, this illuminating collection goes beyond a sole focus on public sector work and uniquely covers the impact of austerity on work across the private, public and voluntary spheres. Drawing on a range of perspectives, the book engages with the major debates surrounding austerity and neoliberalism, providing grounded analysis of the everyday experience of work and employment.

Contends that disability is a central but misunderstood element of global austerity politics. Broadly attentive to the political and economic shifts of the last several decades, Robert McRuer asks how disability activists, artists and social movements generate change and resist the dominant forms of globalization in an age of austerity, or “crip times.” Throughout Crip Times, McRuer considers how transnational queer disability theory and culture—activism, blogs, art, photography, literature, and performance—provide important and generative sites for both contesting austerity politics and imagining alternatives. The book engages various cultural flashpoints, including the spectacle surrounding the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games; the murder trial of South African Paralympian Oscar Pistorius; the photography of Brazilian artist Livia Radwanski which documents the gentrification of Colonia Roma in Mexico City; the defiance of Chilean students demanding a free and accessible education for all; the sculpture and performance of UK artist Liz Crow; and the problematic rhetoric of “aspiration” dependent upon both able-bodied and disabled figurations that emerged in Thatcher’s England. Crip Times asserts that disabled people themselves are demanding that disability be central to our understanding of political economy and uneven development and suggests that, in some locations, their demand for disability justice is starting to register. Ultimately, McRuer argues that a politics of austerity will always generate the compulsion to fortify borders and to separate a narrowly defined “us” in need of protection from “them.”

​This book traces the narrative strategies framing austerity policies through an illuminating analysis of policy documents and political discourses, exposing the political consequences for women, racialized minorities and disabled people. While many have critiqued the ways in which austerity has captured the contemporary political narrative, this is the first book to systematically examine how these narratives work to shift the terms within which policy debates about inequality and difference play out. Gedalof’s exceptional readings of these texts pay close attention to the formal qualities of these narratives: the chronologies they impose, their articulation of crisis and resolution, the points of view they construct and the affective registers they deploy. In this manner she argues persuasively that the differences of gender, race, ethnicity and disability have been stitched into the fabric of austerity as excesses that must be disavowed, as reproductive burdens that are too great for the austere state to bear. This innovative, intersectional analysis will appeal to students and scholars of social policy, gender studies, politics and public policy.