Abstract
This edited collection derives from a series of meetings in Lisbon in 2009–2011 sponsored by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Thus, the meetings were framed in the aftermath of the Global Financial Crisis that began in the United States and first became widely evident in 2007–2008, spreading through contagion effects and sui generis dynamics to Europe. This is reflected in the book’s title. Its subtitle distinguishes this book from the plethora of other works on ‘the crisis’. It explores the theme that the economy is – all economies are – culture. Accordingly, while some contributors trace the cultural aspects of crisis-generation in the recent and, in many respects, continuing crisis, others identify and evaluate whether other economic cultures and alternative economic regimes are emerging within the interstices, or at the margins of, the leading capitalist economies.
The editors and the chosen theme are interesting for three reasons. First, the senior editor is rightly celebrated for his analyses of the rise of the networked, informational economy, the network state and the significance of networks as the basis for identity formation and social movements following the crisis of Atlantic Fordism. The irony, noted in the introduction, is that the crisis emerged in the new, informational economy (specifically in the speculative financial sector with its massive profit-oriented innovations enabled by information and communication technologies and, one might add, by the unusual deals with political authority that led to the liberalization, deregulation and de-criminalization of financial capital). Second, the meetings happened in Lisbon, the Portuguese capital, which lent its name to the Lisbon Agenda in 2000, when the European Union (EU) committed itself to becoming the most competitive knowledge-based economy in the world, compatible with maintaining the European Social Model. The irony here is that the EU failed in this ambition, is still mired in crisis and, most notably, that Portugal is one of the hardest-hit economies in Europe. Third, while all economies are cultural, the cultures of some economies are more powerful than others. The neoliberal regime shifts in the 1970s–1990s created a culture that contributed significantly to crisis-generation, and the US and UK are proving more robust than other advanced economies and alternative cultures explored in this volume. This illustrates what Karl Deutsch observed some 50 years ago: power can be defined as the ability not to have to learn from one’s mistakes and to impose the lessons and costs of mistakes on others. This collection can be read profitably in the light of these three observations.
The introduction to the volume notes that the crisis originated in the informational economy that was expected to resolve the crisis-tendencies of the Fordist era but does not detail or explain the significance of finance (especially the separation of finance from the so-called ‘real economy’, which is, of course, mediated through money and finance). At best, the editors seem to explain this irony more in terms of short-sightedness and greed on the part of management than in terms of specific structural features of neoliberal, finance-dominated accumulation. They also note the irony that an even worse financial implosion was avoided through the intervention of the state, which neoliberals had long criticized (at least regarding welfare functions for the citizens and denizens of national societies – but not regarding its role in corporate welfare and extending the entitlements of the new corporate citizens through the action of all three branches of government) but had prudently kept in reserve, as always, in case of economic or other emergencies. Another, unnoticed irony, is that the measures that rescued finance (rather than householders or the ‘real economy’) have largely served to fuel another asset bubble that is threatening to burst again, with even more serious risks of debt-default-deflation dynamics than before. The introduction is complemented by a shorter conclusion, titled, appropriately, ‘aftermath’, that argues that although we are necessarily living in the aftermath of the crisis, we cannot return to the recent past. This conclusion seems to be normatively rather than scientifically motivated – especially as the future is inherently uncertain. Indeed, in 2012, the editors ended with a plausible but dystopian account of the many faultlines, crisis-tendencies and multiple challenges to restoring stability, let alone a stability marked by economic and social justice and a sustainable future.
In between the introduction and the reflections on living in its ‘aftermath’ are 11 chapters that examine aspects of the crisis: two on the historical background to its genealogy; two on the metamorphosis of the financial crisis and its wider social repercussions; three on different ways in which the crisis served as an opportunity for different types of cultural response; two on attempts to imagine and implement economic cultures and practices that could insulate those affected from this or future crises or, indeed, provide a more general solution in alternative economic regimes based on alternative economic cultures; and two that reflect on crisis dynamics outside the principal sites of the North Atlantic Financial Crisis. These chapters are a mixed and eclectic bunch, reflecting the authors’ backgrounds and interests, and they are best interpreted as a series of idiosyncratic reflections on different aspects of the structurally rooted multiple crises that have become evident after the outbreak of the financial crisis, been intensified by it or developed more generally in the context of that crisis.
I will now pick out some provocative, important or surprising themes raised in these chapters that seem to merit discussion in the context of the continuing crisis and could, as the editors note, contribute to the development of a new mind-set that will point beyond the inherited and unsustainable model of speculative finance and political irresponsibility and towards something more akin to the period of post-war reconstruction after 1945, which ushered in 30 years of growth and relative prosperity in the heartlands of Fordism.
First, Rosalind Williams begins with a short vignette of crisis at Berkeley University and builds on this to explore the conceptual history of crisis and aftermath as complementary notions. There follow some more speculative reflections by João Caraça on how the cultural and institutional separations associated with modernity and reinforced by the logic of capital accumulation and its dominance as a principle of societal organization have ‘killed modernity’. This indicates the need to develop an alternative modern or post-modern future based on a new meta-narrative that points beyond inherited meta-narratives and looks to a future based on bounty and beauty. John Thompson then deploys Habermas’ approach to crisis and crisis-displacement from the 1970s to the recent and continuing crisis, tracing the evolution of the financial crisis into political and legitimacy crises and the problems that this poses for crisis-management. In turn, Michel Wieviorka reviews some interpretations and explanations of the crisis and proposes some sociological analytical tools that could provide a more coherent, synthetic analysis of the crisis and its aftermath that highlights the role of productive conflicts in limiting crisis-tendencies and providing a positive social dynamic.
As is well-known, the Chinese ideogram for crisis combines the characters for danger/threat and opportunity. The next three chapters turn from explaining the threat to exploring opportunities. Sarah Banet-Weiser considers how US companies exploited the crisis to promote their brands and brand identities in different local contexts. Terhi Rantanen examines how the financial crisis destroyed trust in some institutions, organizations and practices and created opportunities for redirecting trust elsewhere, especially the revival of nationalism in response to a crisis with global scope and impact. And Pekka Himanen, drawing on the examples of Portugal and Finland, discusses how the crisis has created new chances for alternative social networks and new forms of networked economy and networked welfare. The theme of opportunity in crisis is taken further in the next two chapters, one dealing with how new media emerged in the crisis (Gustavo Cardoso and Pedro Jacobetty) and an especially thought-provoking chapter on the emergence of local alternative economic cultures and practices (Joana Cornill, Manuel Castells, Amalia Cardenas and Lisa Servon). The final two chapters (excluding the ‘aftermath’) establish that the global crisis is not truly global. You-tien Hsing explores selected aspects of crisis dynamics in China, focusing on challenges to social stability, and Ernesto Ottone points to the role buen vivir (a good life) as a potential post-neoliberal future, drawing on the crisis-prone Latin American experience.
Overall, this volume is an interesting contribution to the emerging field of cultural political economy, that is, a concern to integrate cultural themes, methods and substantive arguments directly into the analysis and critique of political economy. While it has not laid firm theoretical foundations for this, the volume does show the heuristic power of the cultural turn in this regard. It can be recommended on these and many other grounds.