Discourses on the economic crises of 1979 and 2001 from a comparative perspective

Abstract

This study analyses the discourses on the economic crises of 1979 and 2001 from a comparative perspective. The different ways the field of economy was conceived, and how society was imagined in the late-1970s, and early-2000s are examined, with the assumption that the crises provide fertile ground for analysis. The study shows that, as far as its representation in the media is concerned, the economy became a more abstract field with less permeable borders from the 1970s to the 2000s. The references tu daily life experiences were replaced by abstractions and technical calculations. The economy started to be conceived of as a distinct sphere of reality, with particular dynamics that can be understood only by experts. The emergence of economy as a separate field was concomitant with the replacement of welfare state regimes with neo-liberal economy policies, and the consequent reconfiguration of the social. Under neo-liberal governmentality, the social lost its importance as the subject of government; while the people were started to be codified more market players than as citizens. In line with this transformation, discourses on the crises indicate that in the two periods what was called an economics crisis was quite different. In 1979, the daily experiences of the lower and middle classes were represented to be the crisi, while in 2001 the abstract financial markets were taken to be centre of crisis. The temporal and spatial coordinates of the crisis changed accordingly as well as the representation of devaluation.