The Global Crisis of Economic Meaning

Not Necessarily the Best in the World: The Boom and Crisis in Iceland

“…After the crash, it was a shocking realisation to many the ones who had led the country to destruction were Icelandic individuals. Natalía's words vividly re࠲ ect how economic crises are not simply about money or ࠱ nancial losses (Schwegler 2009), but also are well endowed with meaning in a much deeper sense. Economic crises are often entangled with a loss of vision of the future and a reinterpretation of the past -as well as raise questions in regard to who we are and who we were.…”

Тhe Spectacles of the Crisis: Local Perception of Economic and Social Change in Valenza

“…In the account given by the two scholars, however, the analysis of the global crisis emerges as an analysis of the global market and its internal functioning more than the study of the cultural repercussions on the local level that a global downturn might have (Hart and Ortiz 2008, 2). Similarly, Tara Schwegler (Schwegler 2009) reads the crisis as an opportunity for anthropologists to "add a critical theoretical dimension to the diagnosis and ongoing analysis of the global economic order" (Schwegler 2009, 9), where this dimension concerns the internal work of the market. More recently, Stephen Gudeman (Gudeman 2010) has proposed his reading of the global market moving from a flattened idea of the market to a multilayered one.…”

Iceland, rejected by McDonald's: desire and anxieties in a global crisis

“…Within the current economic crisis in Iceland, the anxieties that flow from not being fully acknowledged as one of the powerful Western countries have gained new focus, reflecting how questions of identity are inherent parts of economic predicaments. Current anthropological research on the economic crisis and global financial markets has followed a long disciplinary tradition of looking at economies holistically as an intrinsic part of society (Schwegler ) and treating finance within larger configurations of social relations and history (Peebles ) while simultaneously criticising the ‘mystification’ of finance and economic processes (Ho ).…”

“…After the economic crash, Icelanders continued to engage with questions regarding Iceland's global circumstances in a dynamic relationship with notions of their own past. In line with anthropological perspectives on economics as holistically embedded in other aspects of society (Ho ; Schwegler ), it has to be emphasised that the notions of ‘crisis’ are entangled with multiple meanings that cannot be reduced to pure economic variables. In a wider perspective, these anxieties in Iceland can simultaneously be seen as mirroring, on a deeper level, the persistent global inequalities and the increased sense of precariousness (Muehlebach ; Klein ).…”