‘Give me your watch and I will tell you the time’: crisis and austerity in the European Union from a Bourdieusian perspective

We investigate crisis and austerity in the context of the European Union (EU) by appealing to the work of Pierre Bourdieu. Evidence suggests that after the recent US and Eurozone economic crises, fiscal consolidation intensified the deterioration of socio-economic conditions in Europe. We turn to analyses versed in the Bourdieusian tradition to explain crises and austerity in relation to the domination of the financial field and the ascendancy of neoliberal policies, processes of symbolic violence and misrecognition, and struggles for symbolic power. We then apply this framework to assess the EU economic governance system and the rhetoric imposed on Member States and social partners to justify austerity. Finally, we discuss ways to confront these conditions by presenting Bourdieu’s conception of the ‘collective intellectual’, who collaborates with other social groups in order to uncover the power relations and inequalities generated by neoliberal policies and to promote alternative economic policies for social welfare.