The Global Life of Austerity ― Economic Crises Beyond Europe

Austerity and structural adjustment programs are just the latest forms of neoliberal policy to have a profoundly damaging impact on the targeted populations. Yet, as the contributors to this collection argue, the recent austerity-related European crisis is not a breach of erstwhile development schemes, but a continuation of economic policies. Using historical analysis and ethnographically-grounded research, this volume shows the similarities of the European conundrum with realities outside Europe, seeing austerity in a non-Eurocentric fashion. In doing so, it offers novel insights as to how economic crises are experienced at a global level.

Theodoros Rakopoulos is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He has previously worked as Research Fellow at the University of Bergen (2015-16) and at the Human Economy Programme (University of Pretoria, 2013-14). He has conducted long-term fieldwork in rural Sicily and urban Greece and has published extensively in anthropological and regional journals, more recently in Current Anthropology and Critique of Anthropology. His monograph From Clans to Co-ops: Confiscated Mafia land in Sicily was published by Berghahn (2017).