Financial Crash Research Articles

Review: Diners, Dudes, and Diets. How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture, by Emily J. H. Contois

Review: <i>Diners, Dudes, and Diets. How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture</i>, by Emily J. H. Contois

The lines of descent of the present crisis

The neoliberal settlement has been comprehensively destabilised by the 2007 financial crisis, the imposition of austerity, growing social inequalities and the emergence of populism as a social force. This article explores why institutional opposition to this settlement has principally taken a nationalist form in Britain. It does so through a history of the present by tracing the labyrinthine lines of descent and the social forces and conflicts from which the contemporary moment emerged. In particular, I show how the conditions for the emergence of these nationalist projects were produced incrementally over time and through a series of interrelated social processes. These included the caesura of the 1970s and the shift from Fordist to flexible regimes of accumulation secured by extinguishing the educated hope generated by an increasingly multi-ethnic politics and language of class; the bipartisan commitment to neoliberalism; the racialisation of class through state multiculturalism; and the long-term failure to arrest the structural decline of non-urban localities caused by the technical decomposition of class. In this explanation, the 2007 financial crash and the continuing indifference of the political elites to the deepening injuries of class and locality constituted an accelerant placed on an already emergent crisis of representation helping to engineer a transformation in the political opportunity structure by opening a space for nationalist mobilising structures to fill the political vacuum.

Neoliberalism and the Opportunodemic

It would be far too unkind to suggest that academics and journalists have presented the COVID-19 pandemic in isolation from its broader economic context. However, it would be less unkind to suggest that its location in a triptych of major crises – the Great Financial Crash and its subsequent neoliberal austerity programmes, climate change, and the imminent deglobalisation signaled by the Ukraine-Russia conflict –could do with a little more clarity and accuracy. I want to make a small contribution to that emerging clarity by focusing on a specific interface between the pandemic, economic thinking and the role of the nation-state.

Hardly working: eliding remunerative labour in recent Irish women’s fiction

ABSTRACT This article examines Sara Baume’s Seven Steeples (2020), Naoise Dolan’s Exciting Times, and Caoilinn Hughes’ Orchid and the Wasp (2018) and The Wild Laughter (2020) as reactions against the capitalist expectation that human worth can be measured by an individual’s contribution towards remunerative labour. These texts are all recent novels by young Irish women writers in which the protagonists seek a form of work which elides participation in the neoliberal economic system – either as profit-making or salaried workers, or in the traditionally female role of providing domestic labour to a profit-making or salaried male partner. The article explores the fraught relationship between these novels’ protagonists and a globalised labour market which is simultaneously scarred by, and in continued denial about, the existential shock it faced in the 2008–9 financial crash, with a particular focus on the Republic of Ireland’s role as a key site of late capitalist deregulation, where the effects of the crash were particularly severely felt.

Mobilizing affect in Spanish film and screen media from the Great Recession to the present

This issue examines a range of affects in film, television and other forms of screen media produced in Spain following the global financial crash of 2008. Contributors interrogate the emergence as well as the limitations of counter-hegemonic discourse in contemporary Spain, unveiling neo-liberal capitalism’s stranglehold on society. Tracing the intensification of political dissent in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the articles featured in this Special Issue wrestle with the mobilization of what Chantal Mouffe has characterized as the passions – or the antagonistic confrontation between distinct political ideologies – over the last decade and a half.

Post-fiction affect after the Spanish crisis in La plaga/The Plague (Ballús 2013) and Estado de malestar/State of Distress (Ruido 2019)

This article examines post-fiction affect in filmic landscapes produced in Spain over the last decade, focusing on La plaga/The Plague (Ballús 2013) and Estado de malestar/State of Distress (Ruido 2019). It suggests post-fiction affect as an innovative type of audio-visual discourse that confronts neo-liberal logic following the global financial crash of 2007–08 and the ensuing crisis years in Spain (2008–14). What characterizes these documentary-inspired works is that they do not intend to represent reality but rather intervene in it. Going beyond Steven Shaviro’s work on affect in cinema, this text examines the specific post-cinematic paradigms at the turn of the twenty-first century and renewed forms of sensibility through emergent technologies and political affect.

A morphological analysis of Brexitism

ABSTRACT Despite a burgeoning literature on the topic, Brexit has not yet been the subject of a comprehensive ideological analysis. Through morphological analysis we establish an understanding of the concepts and ideas which underpin Brexit’s ideological structure and situate the political event and its aftermath firmly within a political economy context, as a response to the 2008 financial crash. Brexitism is a permutation of Conservatism which seeks to protect the interests of capital by maintaining a ‘state of exception’ characterised by instability and crisis. Political support is mobilised by way of a relentless pursuit of destructive change and innovation combined with a deindividualising concept of sovereignty. Thatcherism’s market justice gives way to a more inequitable and arbitrary concept, manifested in Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda, which legitimises the sustained instability. Traditional Conservative rationality and respect for authority are necessarily eschewed in favour of stronger but more rigid emotional ties. While politically efficacious, Brexitism is inherently unstable and volatile, predicated on a contradiction between the promise of liberty and the maintenance of instability and uncertainty. Without the easy invocation of the ‘EU menace’ the fate of Johnson’s levelling up agenda will decide the longevity of this particular ideological iteration of British Conservatism.

Mobilizing During the Covid-19 Pandemic: From Democratic Innovation to the Political Weaponization of Disinformation

Political scholars express concern for the continued resilience of democracy in the face of multiple crises. In times of crisis, social movements articulate grievances and make demands of political leaders and policymakers. In contrast to the wave of pro-democracy movements following the 2008 global financial crash where protesters demanded accountability from elites, mobilization during the COVID-19 pandemic has defied expectations in several key ways. First, the expectation for protesters to mobilize primarily online in the face of the restrictions and risk associated with large gatherings has not been upheld. Instead, we have witnessed widespread “offline” mass protests. Second, despite high mortality rates and significant disparities in the effectiveness of national public health responses, we have not witnessed widespread mobilizations demanding governments do better to protect citizens from the virus. Instead, we have seen two radically different responses: At one extreme, veterans of “pro-democracy” movements have “pivoted,” using their skills and experience to either make up for weak government responses to COVID-19 (Hong Kong) or to reinforce government efforts to contain it (Taiwan). At the other extreme, “antidemocratic” and predominantly far right-wing movements have mobilized against public health measures, circulating COVID negationist and conspiracy messages. Indeed, the political weaponization of disinformation has been a notable feature of pandemic mobilization. I analyze these contrasting trends, highlighting the challenges they pose for the effective handling of the pandemic, and their broader implications for democratic legitimacy and resilience. In so doing, I call attention to the ways that mobilization during the pandemic challenges scholars to revisit some of our assumptions about the dynamics of social movements in times of crisis, and how they can foster or erode democracy. The analysis also suggests that scholars analyzing the impact of information disorders on democracy need to pay careful attention to offline protest as well as online transmission.

Food insecurity among pregnant women living in high-income countries: a systematic review

BackgroundFood insecurity is an increasingly important public health concern in high-income countries following the 2008 global financial crash, and recently with the COVID-19 pandemic. Food insecurity has been understood as a highly gendered issue, affecting more women than men. As women have more complex nutritional needs because of their menstrual cycle, pregnancy, and breastfeeding, the nutritional impact of food insecurity is also greater for women than for men. This systematic review aims to explore pregnant women's experiences of food insecurity in high-income countries and to understand how food insecurity affects their health, wellbeing, diet, and nutrition. MethodsWe did a systematic review following PRISMA reporting guidelines. A comprehensive search strategy was developed using search terms such as “food insecurity” and “pregnancy outcomes”. We searched seven databases (MEDLINE, Embase, Scopus, Web of Science, PsychInfo, ASSIA, and CINAHL), grey literature, reference lists, and citations, as well as contacted authors. No language restrictions were used, and only studies primarily containing data collected from Jan 1, 2008, onwards were included. Database searches were completed in April 2022; supplementary searches are ongoing. Inclusion criteria is based on PECOS. Screening, data extraction, and quality assessment were done by two authors independently. This systematic review is registered on PROSPERO, number CRD42022311669. Findings27 studies met the inclusion criteria, with all studies published between 2015 and 2022. 24 (89%) of 27 studies were done in the USA, two (7%) in Canada, and one (4%) in the UK. Outcomes reported include dietary intake or dietary quality during pregnancy (seven [26%] of 27), gestational weight gain (seven [26%]), mental health (five [19%]), pregnancy outcomes including pregnancy complications, preterm birth, or birthweight (five [19%]), and other health outcomes or combination of nutrition, health, and wellbeing (three [11%]). Evidence synthesis is ongoing and will be complete by August, 2022. InterpretationThis systematic review suggests that food insecurity experienced during pregnancy was associated with negative health and nutrition outcomes. The rigorous searches are strengths of this study. A limitation is the restricted focus on studies done from 2008 onward. More research to guide efficient interventions that address food insecurity among pregnant women is needed. FundingNone.

Is gold still a safe haven for stock markets? New insights through the tail thickness of portfolio return distributions

This study examines the safe-haven property of gold during two deep financial crashes: the global financial crisis (GFC) and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Applying extreme value theory, we analyze the tail behavior of the returns of 46 stock indices sorted by geographic location and level of market development and then investigate these portfolios with various gold allocations. We focus on changes in the tail thickness of the portfolio return distribution as an effect of an increased gold allocation. The COVID-19 crisis exhibited heavier lower tails of the stock indices than the GFC. During the GFC, gold enabled heavy Fréchet-type tails to change into thin Gumbel-type tails, whereas during the COVID-19 crash, the tails remained heavy, even after hedging. Thus, gold acted as a safe-haven asset, significantly decreasing extreme downside risk during the GFC, but the same result cannot be confirmed for the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tropes Revisited: Evert Sprinchorn'sIbsen's Kingdom: The Man and His Worksand Recent Historical Research in Ibsen Studies

Tropes Revisited: Evert Sprinchorn's<i>Ibsen's Kingdom: The Man and His Works</i>and Recent Historical Research in Ibsen Studies

Capitalist crisis and the geography of the clothing industry

This article aims to analyse how the map of clothing manufacturing has changed since the 2008 financial crash. In doing so I look at global and intra-regional trade statistics before and after 2008. Here, I challenge the long-standing dominance of Global Commodity Chains and Global Value Chains approaches in debates about the geography of the clothing industry. These approaches fail to explain processes beyond regions and firms directly linked to global production networks, like the rise of ‘local sweatshops’ in large cities in core economies and the deindustrialisation caused by the globalisation of production in peripheral countries not linked to these networks. Here, global production networks are considered as one particular way of organising production, or, in Harvey’s terms, a ‘spatial fix’ coexisting with other spatial fixes developed by capital in response to the economic crisis of the 1970s. Rather inspired by recently reanimated debates on uneven development, I address changes in the map of clothing manufacturing by emphasising broader processes of capital accumulation and circulation. More specifically, I look at the effects of the capitalist crisis, the eastward shift in globalisation – evidenced primarily by the rise of Chinese economy – trade tensions, declining labour supply and rising labour costs across Southern and SE Asia on corporate spatial strategies. The emphasis on meso-level processes and connections, therefore, helps address politically important questions about possible future trajectories of garment manufacturing and supply in and beyond global production networks.

Financial Growth and Crash under Shadow Banking

ABSTRACT This article develops a macroeconomic model of interaction between the real sector and the financial sector, and explores the conditions that make the economy vulnerable to sudden collapse as a result of finance-led growth. It extends the Kaleckian framework of the link between profit and investment in a modern financialized economy with some specific features of shadow banking and articulates the underlying dynamics that render the economy systemically fragile and vulnerable to abrupt crashes. We elaborate on this link through a stock-flow consistent accounting framework and study the dynamics through two interacting forces of the shadow banking sector: profit-seeking and liquidity preference. The article formally articulates the dynamics through the framework of ‘cusp catastrophe’ and identifies some early warning signs of potential financial collapse.

Social innovations and street-level bureaucracies: the governance of housing squats in Rome

As the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash has caused a spike in housing vulnerability, squatting for housing purposes has gained a new momentum in Rome (Italy). If national laws like the Article 5 of the 2014 Housing Plan have pursued the eradication of the phenomenon, local districts have often adopted a more dialoguing approach towards the squatters and Housing Rights Movements to de-escalate the social exclusion it undergirds. Dwelling upon activist-ethnographic materials, this paper combines the social innovation theory with the framework of street-level bureaucracies to critically appreciate whether the initiatives activated by local administrators and social welfare practitioners in cooperation with the Housing Rights Movements in Rome can configure durable social innovations.

Introducing Alternautas 2.0

We are delighted to launch the new OJS version of Alternautas, hosted by the University of Warwick. The first iteration of Alternautas began as a rigorous peer-reviewed blog designed to widen the circulation of knowledge produced by the global South about the global South. It was forged in the fires of the pink tide governments – progressive governments in power across Latin America during the first decade or so of the twenty-first century – and the vigorous debates around development and its alternatives that raged simultaneously, as Carballo, Beling and Waldmüller outline in their history of Alternautas (this issue). The political landscape has shifted in the nine years since Alternautas’ inception. The first generation of pink tide governments have run their cause, unseated from power by the political turbulence that followed the 2008 financial crash (see our special issues on the End of Cycle, Alternautas, 2016). However, the right-wing forced that deposed the Left from power – either through coup d’état, lawfare or the ballot box – have proved unable to tighten their grip on power. A new generation of the Latin American Left is now in power in Chile and Colombia – previous bastons of neoliberalism – whilst the successors of the pink tide reside over Argentina, Bolivia and possibly Brazil, if Lula is successful in his bid to become president once again later this year.

“Batti il 5!”: Grassroots Strategies Against the Administrative Invisibilization of Rome’s Housing Squatters Before and During the Pandemic

Since the 2008 financial crash, housing vulnerability has been acknowledged as a determinant in the erosion of the social and territorial cohesion that is jeopardising the existence of urban communities. However, this recognition departs from the reality of housing policies implemented by states, who largely prioritise the continuity of neoliberal urbanisation over the pursuit of spatialised justice. This approach is exemplified by Article 5 of the 2014 Italian National Housing Plan, which represents the core of governmental effort to repress grassroots responses to the habitation crisis that exploded post-2008. The law aims to discourage the phenomenon of squatting vacant urban space for dwelling by stripping the possibility of housing squatters to have a legally registered address, hence of the civil and social rights connected to formally reckoned urban citizenship. Drawing upon the ethnographic materials collected during my activist-research since 2015 inside the Blocchi Precari Metropolitani collective (as part of the larger Housing Rights Movements, hereby HRMs), the article discusses the practical, political and theoretical relevance of grassroots strategies and contentious politics adopted by the HRMs in Rome to contrast the effects of the law from 2014 onwards, focusing on the critical turning point of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

‘Building back better’ and the search for values: critically reclaiming Temple’s social thought for a post-pandemic policy landscape

This article moves beyond William Temple’s Christianity and Social Order and gives an outline of its implications for public policy today in the context of religiously inspired terrorism, the global financial crash, COVID-19 and postsecularity.

LIQUIDITY OF FUTURES MARKETS OVER THE LAST QUARTER OF A CENTURY: TECHNOLOGY &amp; MARKET STRUCTURE VERSUS ECONOMIC INFLUENCES

This study examines the major technological and market forces that have acted on the liquidity of futures markets over almost the last quarter of a century – equivalent to Professor Robert Webb’s tenor as Editor-in-Chief at the Journal of Futures Markets. We examine the impact of electronic trading replacing open outcry, the impact of high-frequency trading and co-located trading, compare the liquidity impacts of these developments with the impact of major economic events, including the Global Financial Crisis and Covid-19 Pandemic. Using a stock index futures contract traded on Australian futures exchanges as an example, we find that technological advances have had a statistically significant but almost imperceptible influence on measures of liquidity of Australian futures contracts. In contrast, economic crises, and crashes such as the Global Financial Crash and the Covid-19 crash have had a massive and sustained impact on the liquidity of futures markets. Our results suggest that liquidity effects from technological innovations, while important, remain dwarfed by those from extreme outlier events.

Nonstationary Generalised Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity Modelling for Fitting Higher Order Moments of Financial Series within Moving Time Windows

Here, we present a method for a simple GARCH (1,1) model to fit higher order moments for different companies’ stock prices. When we assume a Gaussian conditional distribution, we fail to capture any empirical data when fitting the first three even moments of financial time series. We show instead that a mixture of normal distributions is needed to better capture the higher order moments of the data. To demonstrate this point, we construct regions (parameter diagrams), in the fourth- and sixth-order standardised moment space, where a GARCH (1,1) model can be used to fit moment values and compare them with the corresponding moments from empirical data for different sectors of the economy. We found that the ability of the GARCH model with a double normal conditional distribution to fit higher order moments is dictated by the time window our data spans. We can only fit data collected within specific time window lengths and only with certain parameters of the conditional double Gaussian distribution. In order to incorporate the nonstationarity of financial series, we assume that the parameters of the GARCH model can have time dependence. Furthermore, using the method developed here, we investigate the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic has upon stock’s stability and how this compares with the 2008 financial crash.

Exploring potential for occupational therapy practice models within areas of social deprivation: A qualitative inquiry within a community-centred food cooperative

Background A health inequalities gap exists between wealthy and deprived areas. Community-level occupation-focused interventions may support citizens and address inequities within their environments. Since the global financial crash of 2008 and fiscal policy changes within the United Kingdom, there has been a rise in food insecurity. Community volunteer initiatives have responded by providing for their residents. The aim of this study was to explore how occupational therapists may be agents for social change through exploring perspectives of members and volunteers from a community food cooperative in an area of social deprivation. Methods Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with cooperative members and volunteers within a food cooperative established to address food insecurity in a local community. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results We found three main themes: It’s Not a Foodbank, Shared Hardship and a cross-cutting theme of Community. The results suggest occupation-focused responses can support the development of community and collective occupations thereby contributing solutions to shared problems. Conclusion A community-centred, rights-based approach has supported local community need where socio-economic disadvantage and health inequalities were identified. Scope exists for occupational therapists to work genuinely with (not for) communities to address occupational injustice through collective occupation.