Session Abstract

The Perils of Austerity:  Roundtable Panel for the 2013 American Historical
Association

This panel will problematize calls for government and personal austerity in the U.S. during the late twentieth century.  Papers will examine how the idea gained currency that budget-cutting is virtuous, beneficial, and inevitable,  and whether or not the claims for the beneficial effects of austerity are correct or should be qualified.  The panel should interest political and economic historians, gender historians, and historians of culture and consumption.

Meg Jacobs will examine how “austerity replaced spending as the necessary and proper governmental policy.” Jonathan Soffer’s paper will look at the budget cuts implemented during New York City’s fiscal crisis in the 1970s arguing that the damage to the built environment, public order,  health, and the impairment of city agencies’ effectiveness as a result of cuts and layoffs ultimately cost more money than they saved.   Natasha Zaretsky will examine the conflicts between the ideology of austerity and 1970s feminism.  Louis Hyman’s paper looks at austerity ideology on the level of the family budget, concluding that some commonplace ideas about personal thrift may lack validity in a volatile economy, and that the same ideas, when used to legitimate larger national policy can obscure the US economy’s real structural problems.  Michael Bernstein, Professor of History and Economics and Provost of Tulane University will chair and comment.