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Discussions of the recent austerity measures in Southern Europe as a response to the sovereign debt crisis have been usually framed in terms of their economic impact. However, the general impoverishment of these countries has induced other massive social and political changes, a fact which is ignored in the literature. This volume seeks to fill this gap and break ground by analyzing these trends in the Portuguese context.
Portugal has been portrayed as the Troika's good pupil by obediently adopting all prescribed austerity measures. In the process, the nation's fragile social fabric has been destroyed. Massive emigration, particularly by young people, massive increases in poverty and a foundering economy have triggered a collective framing of the crisis and austerity as unjust and punitive of a collectivity that, at the beginning, naively believed in the neoliberal narrative of the benign effects of the cuts. This reframing unleashed an unprecedented wave of social and political mobilization in an otherwise traditionally apathetic society. This resistance needs to be addressed as a direct effect of austerity policies and properly analyzed for what it really represents: a process of repoliticization and re-democratization sweeping Europe. These mobilizations include direct democracy experiments, the growing influence of social movements (the massive March 2011 demonstrations were a direct inspiration for the creation of the Indignado movement in Spain, attesting the contagion effect), solidarity economy and the major political change in the country's 42 years of democratic rule: an alliance of the left parties, unthinkable before the crisis, and which is reframing relations with the European Union.
This volume offers a first approach to the massive political, social and cultural transformations taking place in the country that make Portugal, in certain aspects, a lab for innovative practices (e.g. participatory budgets and the alliance of the left parties) that may be used elsewhere as alternatives to current understandings of economic and political orthodoxy
Sommario
Part I: The Impact of the Crisis
Chapter 1: Portugese Economy: How (Not) to Get Away with Financial Crisis and Economic Adjustment Programs, by Carla Guapo Costa
Chapter 2: Tourism Gentrification in Lisbon: The Panacea of Touristification as a Scenario of Post-Capitalist Crisis, by Luís Filipe Gonçalves Mendes
Part II: Resisting the Crisis
Chapter 3: The Anti-Austerity Protest Cycle in Portugal: The Ambiguous Relations between Social Movements and Left-Wing Political Parties, by Dora Fonseca
Chapter 4: Digital Activism, Political Participation and Social Movements in Times of Crisis, by José Alberto Simões, Ricardo Campos, Inês Pereira, Mafalda Esteves and Jordi Nofre
Chapter 5: The People's Assemble of Algés: Heterotopia and Radical Democracy in Crisis-Stricken Portugal, by Marcos Farias Ferreira and João Terrenas
Chapter 6: The Crisis on the Wall: Political Muralism and Street Art in Lisbon, by Ricardo Campos
Part III: Beyond Crisis and Stereotyping: A Laboratory for Innovative Practices
Chapter 7: Demolishing Portugal's "Berlin Wall": The Portuguese Left Against Austerity Policies, by Maria João Ferreira and Pedro Fonseca
Chapter 8: When Citizen Participation Unexpectedly Grows in Quality and Quantity: A Side Effect or an Inherent Consequence of "Asteritarian" Approaches? by Giovanni Allegretti
Conclusion: What Can We Learn from the Crisis? by Isabel David
Info autore
Isabel David is assistant professor at the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Lisbon.
Riassunto
This edited volume offers a global account of the impact of the 2008 crisis on Portuguese economy and society. This impact is as much about devastation of the economic and social fabric as it is about the transformations and reconfigurations produced by austerity measures, making Portugal a laboratory of innovative practices.
