Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and Affect in Southern Europe

Knight, D.M.; Stewart, C.

doi:10.1080/02757206.2015.1114480

Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and Affect in Southern Europe

Knight, D.M.; Stewart, C.

Authors

D.M. Knight

C. Stewart

Abstract

This article focuses on how the economic crisis in Southern Europe has stimulated temporal thought (temporality), whether tilted in the direction of historicizing, presentifying, or futural thought, provoking people to rethink their relationship to time. The argument is developed with particular reference to the ethnographies of living with austerity inside the eurozone contained in this special issue. The studies identify the ways the past may be activated, lived, embodied, and re-fashioned under contracting economic horizons. We argue for the empirical study of crisis that captures the decisions or non-decisions that people make, and the actual temporal processes by which they judge responses. We conclude that modern linear historicism is often overridden in such moments by other historicities, showing that in crises, not only time, but history itself as an organizing structure and set of expectations, is up for grabs.

Citation

Knight, D., & Stewart, C. (2016). Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and Affect in Southern Europe. History and Anthropology, 27(1), 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2015.1114480

Journal Article Type	Article
Online Publication Date	Jan 5, 2016
Publication Date	Jan 5, 2016
Deposit Date	Oct 29, 2015
Publicly Available Date	Apr 5, 2016
Journal	History and Anthropology
Print ISSN	0275-7206
Electronic ISSN	1477-2612
Publisher	Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed	Peer Reviewed
Volume	27
Issue	1
Pages	1-18
DOI	https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2015.1114480

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© 2015 The Author(s). Published by Taylor & Francis. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.