Austerity optimism: Affective geographies of institutional coordination

Geographers have extensively theorised the spatial politics of austerity as a form of state rescaling, which aims to redistribute power to new sites in order to roll back the welfare state. However, existing research has tended to neglect the everyday institutional geographies which effect this rescaling. A small literature has begun to examine the spatial relations which enrol institutional actors in the delivery of austerity, focussing largely on the role of discourses and practices. In contrast, this paper examines the mobilisation of affect in this process. Where most research into affect and austerity has focussed on negative feelings, I analyse a positive affective attachment to fiscal retrenchment: austerity optimism . I diagnose this attachment among local council bureaucrats in England responsible for delivering cuts to health services. I investigate the role of austerity optimism in organising these actors, and therefore reproducing both austerity and the institution as contingent geographical forms. Drawing on Sara Ahmed’s theory of affective economies, I identify two spatial mechanisms which regulate affect to deepen austerity optimism. Spatial priming organises spaces and bodies to coax out optimistic affects while affective reiteration persistently reproduces affective attachments, to foreclose alternatives. The paper thereby theorises relationships between space, feelings and politics which promulgate the spatial violence of austerity, while also examining the potentiality of affect to open up practices which resist austerity within the institution.