Heine, Frederic (2019) The always lurking temptation of inflation : masculinities and the gender politics of the Eurozone crisis. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates how gender politics operate in the monetary and economic governance of the Eurozone crisis. Extant approaches in Feminist Political Economy have pointed out how gendered representations were mobilised during the global financial crisis to re-legitimise finance; in representations of femininities (e.g. the Swabian Housewife or a discourse of female risk-aversion) and, to a lesser extent, masculinities. This thesis contributes to this literature through a historical and agential account of the gender politics of the Eurozone crisis. Employing a concept of gendered performative agency, the thesis traces the gendered cultural history of the Eurozone’s governance regime of monetary and fiscal discipline, and its reassertion and contestation in the context of the Eurozone crisis.

The thesis first traces constructions of masculinity through key historical junctures leading to the current Eurozone governance framework. It argues that a disciplinary masculinity prevalent in Imperial Germany was associated with monetary discipline in the aftermath of the hyperinflation crisis in Weimar Germany. Entrenched in Post-WWII Western Germany, this disciplinary performance of monetary policy and its key policy implications - price stability, central bank independence, and fiscal restraint - became the blueprint for the European Monetary Union, and dominated the early response to the Eurozone crisis. Its detrimental gender impacts highlighted the tensions that existed with the EU's gender equality agenda, and provided the grounds for a feminist politics of contestation that the thesis investigates in the context of Spain's feminist and anti-austerity mobilisations.

Overall, the thesis shows how gender is constitutive of the governance of the Eurozone and its crisis, and how gendered performative agency continues to impact and challenge it contingently. This allows for a nuanced and political reading of gender representations and performances in economic governance and therefore makes a theoretical and empirical contribution to Feminist Political Economy and IPE more broadly.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman J Political Science > JN Political institutions (Europe)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Identity politics -- European Union countries, Masculinity -- Political aspects -- European Union countries, Eurozone -- History -- 21st century, Eurozone -- Political aspects
Official Date:	September 2019
Dates:	Date Event September 2019 UNSPECIFIED
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Department of Politics and International Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Elias, Juanita ; Brassett, James
Format of File:	pdf
Extent:	292 leaves : illustrations (some colour)
Language:	eng

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