The "Greek Crisis" in Europe: Race, Class and Politics

by Yiannis Mylonas

Overview

The “Greek Crisis” in Europe: Race, Class and Politics, critically analyses the publicity of the Greek debt crisis, by studying Greek, Danish and German mainstream media during the crisis’ early years (2009-2015). Mass media everywhere reproduced a sensualistic “Greek crisis” spectacle, while iterating neoliberal and occidentalist ideological myths. Overall, the Greek people were deemed guilty of a systemic crisis, supposedly enjoying lavish lifestyles at the EU’s expense. Using concrete examples, this study foregrounds neo-orientalist, neo-racist and classist stereotypes deployed in the construction and media coverage of the Greek crisis. These media practices are connected to the “soft politics” of the crisis, which produce public consensus over neoliberal reforms such as austerity and privatizations, and secure debt repayment from democratic interventions.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642591934
Publisher:	Haymarket Books
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Series:	Studies in Critical Social Sciences
Pages:	259
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Yiannis Mylonas, Ph.D (2009), University of Copenhagen, is Assistant Professor at the School of Media, National Research UniversityHigher School of Economics, in Moscow.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Figures and Tables

1 Introduction: The Study of the Greek Economic Crisis in Europe through the Media
1.1 Contextual Issues, Critical Political Economy and Cultural Studies
1.2 European Mass Media as the Empirical Material of the Study
1.2.1  A Brief Excursion on Liberalism and its Discontents
1.2.2  Greek, Danish and German Liberal Press
1.3 On Method: Thematic Analysis, Discourse Theory Analysis, Critical Discourse Analysis
1.3.1  The Relevance of Discourse Theory
1.3.2  Critical Discourse Analysis Perspectives
1.4 The Analytical Pillars: Race, Class, Politics
1.4.1  On Race
1.4.1.1 Colonial Remainders: An “Eternal” Greece
1.4.2  On Class
1.4.2.1 Class Hegemony
1.4.3  Theorizing (Post)Politics
1.5 An Outline of the Chapters to Follow

2 Greek Crisis, Eurozone Crisis, Global Capitalist Crisis
2.1 Setting the “Greek Crisis” in Perspective
2.2 A Crisis of Capitalism and Capitalist Crises: A Brief Excursion to Marxian Analyses
2.3 Crisis and Restructuring: Neoliberalism, Globalisation, Financialisation
2.4 The Greek Crisis as a Symptom: Centre and Periphery Divisions
2.5 The EU, the Euro, and Austerity
2.6 Debt, Restructuring and Primary Accumulation
2.7 Concluding Remarks: Understanding Capitalism as Religion

3 The “Greek Crisis” in the Media: Hegemony, Spectacle and Propaganda
3.1 Media Aspects
3.2 Political Communication and the Public Sphere
3.3 Understanding Hegemony
3.3.1 The “Greek Crisis” in the Media: A Critical Overview
3.3.2 Hegemony, Propaganda and Biopolitics
3.4 Spectacular Dimensions of the “Greek Crisis”
3.5 Concluding Remarks: Interpellating and Disciplining the Working Class

4 A Cultural Failure: Reification, Orientalism, Nationalism
4.1 Introduction: (I)liberal Uses of Culture
4.2 Hegemonic Constructions of the (Occidental) Self and the (Oriental) Other
4.3 Greece as a non/quasi-European Other
4.3.1  The Culturalisation of Greece and its Crisis
4.3.2  Greece as a Commodity: Media Rituals to Sustain Ideological Myths
4.3.3  Nationalism, Narcissism, Anxiety: Europe as a Panopticon and a Benchmark
4.4 Concluding Remarks: The Occident, the Orient and the Liberal Meritocracy Cult

5 Under a Middle-Class Gaze
5.1 Governing Inequality
5.2 The Middle-Class Gaze and the Media
5.3 “The Loser” as a Master Class Frame
5.4 The Greek Crisis and the Construction of “Losers”
5.4.1  The Irrational: Ignorant, Irresponsible, and Frustrated
5.4.2  The Immoral: Lazy, Profligate, Deceitful and Bankrupt
5.4.3  The Threatening Other: Resentment, Spite, and Loath
5.4.4  Idealising the Bourgeois; the Enduring Myths of a Peripheral Upper Class
5.5 Concluding Remarks: Reaction, Diversion, Division

6 Exceptionalising the Crisis, Normalising Austerity
6.1 Technocratic Politics
6.2 Establishing the Crisis and Austerity Publicly in Depoliticised Terms
6.2.1  The Eurozone Crisis as an Apocalyptic Spectacle: Mediatised States of Exception
6.2.2  Naturalizing Austerity; the Only Solution (Without an Alternative)
6.2.3  The “Extreme Center” and Constructions of “Realism”
6.3Concluding Remarks: Authoritarian Capitalism with Fascist Dispositions

7 Conclusions: Context, Politics, Negativity
7.1 Reinventing Critique, Reinventing Politics
7.2 Debunking Hegemony’s Crisis’ Myths
7.3 The Making of Regimes of Entitlement: Class is at the Heart of the Matter
7.4 Capitalism is Apocalyptic: Politicizing the Crisis, Austerity, the “Free Market”, and the (Capitalist) Economy
7.5 Negativity and Utopia

Bibliography

Index