Rethinking Economies Seminar Series
WED 13.5.2015 15.00 - 17.00 Pinni B3032.
Rebecca Coleman (Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London) gives a guest lecture on "Austerity Futures - Debt, Temporality and Pessimism as an Austerity Mood."
"Austerity Futures - Debt, Temporality & Pessimism as an Austerity Mood" by Rebecca Coleman
This paper explores the relationships between austerity, debt and mood through a focus on temporality and the future. Its starting point is a poll, conducted in Britain in 2011, which showed an increase of pessimism about the future and led to suggestions that ‘a new pessimism’ had become the ‘national mood’.
Drawing on this survey and other related examples, I ask whether and how pessimism about the future might be considered a mood characteristic of austerity in the UK, and examine some of the implications of the future being imagined not as better but as diminished. I explore the politics of pessimism about the future, focusing especially on the affects and emotions that women and young people might feel. In these senses, I aim to inquire about the kinds of futures that are imagined in the new 'age of austerity', and the affective experiences of such imaginations.
Respondent: Susanna Paasonen, University of Turku
Series Convenor: Lisa Adkins University of Tampere / University of Turku
For more information, please visit
Social Science for the C21st web site
or contact:
researcher Olli Karsio
olli.karsio@uta.fi
