Underpinnings Of Austerity

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Adopting a feminist methodological position, the central thesis of this dissertation can be separated into three interrelated claims: 1) the UK austerity project is ideological, 2) austerity is a gendered phenomenon, and 3) austerity is actively reversing progress towards a more gender equal society by pushing gender equality issues back into the so-called ‘private sphere’. These central assertions are supported primarily through a combination of the qualitative methodologies of literature review and discourse analysis. In relation to the first claim, I assess the rhetorical underpinnings of austerity presented by various policymakers since the contemporary austerity project’s inception, with such discourse amounting to a justificatory ‘austerity story’. For the second claim, I contend that austerity is gendered in terms of both: a) its direct impacts, and b) the discursive framework adopted by policymakers in order to justify austerity measures and construct its meaning as a necessary, unavoidable response to fiscal uncertainty. Given the conspicuously gendered dimensions of austerity, it is then viable to postulate the third conjecture that a reversal of the progress made in recent decades towards gender equality is occurring under austerity, with the example of the retrenchment of domestic violence service provision illustrating this. Here, feminist literature exploring the ubiquitous theme of the ontological ‘public vs. private’ dichotomy is appealed to by way of illumination. Drawing upon the works of feminist scholars such as Nancy Fraser, Catherine MacKinnon, and Iris Marion Young, I contend that where women’s movements and feminist theoretical works were instrumental in elevating gendered issues such as domestic violence into the ‘public’ realm by reconfiguring such phenomena as inherently political, the current austerity drive is serving to discursively re-draw the boundaries of the public and the private through its withdrawal of state responsibility from the realm of social reproduction (Fraser, 2014, 554), thereby pushing such issues back into the ‘private’ realm of apoliticism. Discourse analysis (DA) - the examination of “the role of discourse in the (re)production and challenge of dominance” (van Dijk, 1993, 249) - is highly fruitful in this context. Through the construal of discourse as “the pragmatic process of meaning negotiation” (Widdowson, 1995, 164), we are able to critically assess the ways in which the “meaning-making” (Tenorio, 2011, 184) rhetorical power of language “as social practice” (Phillips …show more content…
However, demonstrating sensitivity towards the power of language in the construction of the phenomenon of austerity does not preclude us from critically examining the tangible impacts of the austerity policies that are facilitated by particular discursive constructions or ‘austerity stories’. The adoption of a relativist ontological position opens up a space whereby the dominant understandings of concepts such as austerity can be challenged and transformed. As Phillips and Jorgensen (2002, 178) note, “[m]eanings are contingent and therefore changeable and, if they change, the subject and the surrounding world also change, making available other possibilities for thinking and acting”. In this sense, the adoption of DA as a methodological tool facilitates the notion that the ontological and epistemological status of austerity can be challenged as part of a collective social process; fundamentally, it aids the conviction posited in what follows that austerity is by no means an inevitable feature of social reality in the UK (Phillips and Jorgensen, 2002, 178). Hence, I merge anti-austerity and feminist perspectives in order to draw attention to the alarming ramifications of austerity for social (in)equality in the UK and highlight the need for an urgent change in policy

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