Dabrowski, Vicki A Pragmatic Politics of the Present? In: Combating crises from below: Social responses to polycrisis in Europe. Maastricht University Press, Maastricht.
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Abstract
This chapter draws on empirical research with 16 working-class mothers to explore how they respond to a geometry of intersecting crises within the context of UK austerity. In doing so, the chapter demonstrates how forms of mood enacted in these women’s responses – sadness, worry, pessimism, hope - can be interpreted as constituting a type of ‘political project’. A project which, I argue, may be theorized as an agentive social response to the geometry of crises that accompany and are intensified by the austerity programme. Due to the particular experiences and social locations of the women in this chapter, this ‘political project’ is not necessarily spoken through an overtly feminist discourse of resistance and empowerment. Nor does it neatly equate to pre-existing social movement agendas and campaigns that are critical of debt and austerity. Rather, amidst the local urban realities of such crises, a pragmatic politics of coping, survival and simply not being ‘worn out’ exists in close proximity. If political action can be understood as ‘the action of not being worn out by politics’ (Berlant, 2011, p. 262), then these women’s experiences represent a kind of potential constituency for social movements, and as demonstrated in the chapter, become highly relevant for social movement scholarship.
| Item Type: | Book Section |
|---|---|
| Faculty / Department: | Faculty of Education and Social Sciences > School of Social Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Vicki Dabrowski |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Jul 2023 10:41 |
| Last Modified: | 03 Jul 2023 10:41 |
| URI: | https://hira.hope.ac.uk/id/eprint/3978 |
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