Crisis E-Book

Sylvia Walby

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 407

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

We are living in a time of crisis which has cascaded through society. Financial crisis has led to an economic crisis of recession and unemployment; an ensuing fiscal crisis over government deficits and austerity has led to a political crisis which threatens to become a democratic crisis. Borne unevenly, the effects of the crisis are exacerbating class and gender inequalities. Rival interpretations - a focus on 'austerity' and reduction in welfare spending versus a focus on 'financial crisis' and democratic regulation of finance - are used to justify radically diverse policies for the distribution of resources and strategies for economic growth, and contested gender relations lie at the heart of these debates. The future consequences of the crisis depend upon whether there is a deepening of democratic institutions, including in the European Union. Sylvia Walby offers an alternative framework within which to theorize crisis, drawing on complexity science and situating this within the wider field of study of risk, disaster and catastrophe. In doing so, she offers a critique and revision of the social science needed to understand the crisis.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Abbreviations

1 Introduction

Financial Crisis: Democratic Failure

Economic Crisis: Recession

Fiscal Crisis: Austerity

Political Crisis

Alternative Approaches to Economy and Society

Gender

Society

The Book

2 Theorizing Crisis

Introduction

Real or Socially Constructed?

Causes Not Proportionate to Their Consequences

Approaches to Crisis

Risks/catastrophes

Normal accidents/catastrophes

Disasters

Revolts/revolutions

Business cycles, bubbles and financial instability

Recuperation from crisis

Crisis as renewal

Theorizing Social Change and Society Using Complexity Science

Concepts for when the system changes (crisis, tipping point, critical turning point)

What a system is

Not assuming equilibrium

Dynamics that reinforce or change system (negative and positive feedback loops)

Understanding stability (multiple and punctuated equilibria)

Path dependency

Relations between systems

Typology of Relationship Between Crisis and Outcome

System breakdown

Self-correcting system

Renewal of the system

Transition to a new type of system

Conclusions

3 Financial Crisis

Introduction

Financial Crisis, Finance and Financialization

Financial crisis

What is finance?

A New Approach to Finance and Society

Conceptualizing finance

Finance and the economy

Finance and the state

Finance and society

Social system

The Gendering of Finance

Regulating Finance

Regulate better

Collect tax

De-financialize

Deepen democracy

Conclusions

4 Economic Crisis: Recession

Introduction

Cascade

What Recession?

Decline in employment and rise in unemployment

Decline in real wages

Decline in productivity

Gender and the Recession

What happened to gendered relations in the economy?

Labour activation policy

Has the recession pushed women back into the home and ‘economic inactivity’?

Economic Growth Out of Recession

Conclusions

5 Fiscal Crisis: Austerity

Introduction

What Deficit?

Contested Distribution

Inevitable or discretionary austerity?

Tax

Transforming State Transfers

Gendering the Fiscal

Contested Economic Growth Strategies

Brief Keynesian boost

Neoliberal growth theory

Social investment state

Developing a gendered economic growth strategy

Transnational Financial Institutions

Ways Forward for Fiscal Strategy

Conclusions

6 Democratic Crisis?

Introduction

The Edge of a Democratic Crisis

What is democracy?

Distinguishing between political and democratic crises

Is the depth of democracy declining?

State of exception: legitimation of bypassing democratic procedures

Crisis, democracy and violence

Is there a democratic crisis?

What Political Forces?

The neoliberal project

The social democratic project

Contesting forces

The Crisis and the EU

Democracy and the EU

Fiscal crisis

Financial regulation

The next financial crisis

Conclusions

7 Crisis in the Gender Regime

Introduction

Theorizing Changes in Families or in Gender?

Critique of dualist typologies

Developing the Model of the Gender Regime

Re-Gendering the Economic Growth Regime

Finance: preventing destructive instability

Economy: regulating markets for efficiency

Fiscal: social investment state

Democracy: inclusion of all citizens in decision-making

Social democratic public gender regime, not de-familialization

Conclusion: Gender as the Pivot of the Crisis

8 Conclusions: Implications for Social Theory and Public Policy

Narrating the Crisis

Starting point of the crisis

Competing projects

Process and events

Underpinning goals

Lessons

Theoretical Conclusions

Rethinking the concept of society

Rethinking the concept of crisis

Rethinking the concept of market

Rethinking finance and the economy

Rethinking the concepts of state and democracy

The concept of project

Analysing the contradictions in neoliberalism

Analysing the re-gendering of social democracy

The concept of gender regime

Conclusions For Public Policy: Models of Sustainable Growth and Social Justice

Finance

Fiscal

Economy: output, employment and pay

Democracy

Alternative Futures

References

Index

Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Begin Reading

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Crisis

Sylvia Walby

polity

Copyright © Sylvia Walby 2015

The right of Sylvia Walby to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2015 by Polity Press

Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK

Polity Press350 Main StreetMalden, MA 02148, USA

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-0320-9

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Walby, Sylvia.

Crisis / Sylvia Walby.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7456-4760-9 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-7456-4761-6 (pbk. : alk. paper)  1.  Financial crises. 2.  Financial crises--Political aspects.  I. Title.

HB3722.W344 2015

338.5'42--dc23

2015012753

The publisher has used its best endeavours to ensure that the URLs for external websites referred to in this book are correct and active at the time of going to press. However, the publisher has no responsibility for the websites and can make no guarantee that a site will remain live or that the content is or will remain appropriate.

Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been inadvertently overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.

For further information on Polity, visit our website: politybooks.com

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the many who have debated these ideas with me in recent years, including colleagues in the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, the International Sociological Association and its Research Committee 02 on Economy and Society, the European Sociological Association, the Women’s Budget Group, Agnes Hubert, Scarlet Harris, Jude Towers, Liz Kelly, and in particular those who made very helpful comments on the manuscript: Jo Armstrong, Sue Durbin, Aaron Pitluck, John Urry and Mieke Verloo.

Abbreviations

CDO

collateralized debt obligation

EDF

Excessive Deficit Procedure

FSA

Financial Services Authority

GDP

gross domestic product

GVA

gross value added

IMF

International Monetary Fund

NGO

non-governmental organization

OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

ONS

Office for National Statistics

SNP

Scottish National Party

TTIP

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership

UKIP

United Kingdom Independence Party

VAT

value-added tax

WTO

World Trade Organization

1Introduction

What crisis? Is ‘austerity’ the result of excessive spending on welfare? Or were the financial crisis and the decline in living standards it produced the result of the failure to regulate finance in the interests of the 99 per cent?

These rival interpretations of ‘the crisis’ drive different intellectual and political agendas. ‘Austerity’ focuses attention on the reduction in welfare spending and on the structural adjustments to the economy through which it is achieved. ‘Financial crisis’ focuses attention on the deepening of democracy so that the regulation of finance in the interests of the whole society becomes possible once again. At the heart of the debate is whether ‘markets’ are the most ‘efficient’ mechanism to govern the economy and distribute its benefits, or whether regulation by democratic states is necessary to ensure markets are not distorted by powerful interests.

Most people, including economists and other social scientists, did not see the crisis coming. The theoretical tools to foresee the crisis did exist but had been so marginalized that few knew of them. This book excavates those theories and reworks them in the light of evidence and theory generated during the current crisis. It offers a renewal of the theory of society to analyse not only the current crisis but also future ones.

The crisis has cascaded through society: first, a crisis in finance; next, a crisis in the real economy of production and employment; then a fiscal crisis over government budget deficits; and a political crisis, which is on the edge of becoming a democratic crisis. Some small instabilities, such as ‘bubbles’ and ‘business cycles’, can be regarded as ‘normal’, in the sense of being frequently repeated and with few consequences for the wider social system. Other crises are not so contained, and lead to large changes, catastrophe and societal transformation or collapse. The current crisis is not yet over, and continues to cascade through political systems.