Austerity discourses in Europe: how economic experts create identity projects.

The austerity discourse is usually analysed as an academic as well as a policy discourse on current European reform processes. This paper explores how the austerity concept is used by different economic expert discourses to create identity images in the European political economy. Starting from an economic sociology as well as social studies of science perspective, the analysis investigates how three different expert discourses produce certain identity images of the “me” and the “other”. An analysis of identity images is essential to understand how roles for actors in the political economy are constructed. Whereas the “me” image points to the speaker of a certain discourse, the image of the “other” always relates to ways how the speaker interprets and perceives other actors. These images as role models appear in different political, media and economic contexts as means in social struggle over hegemony. Thus, austerity discourses contribute to the cultural and discursive formation of the European political economy. The analysis takes three examples to illustrate the diversity of the current discursive struggles over the present and future form of Europe: ordoliberal “law-and-order” economist’s discourses develop a “resolute” me-perspective, the economic experts from the Keynesian camp constitute the discursive “me” as a “critical” discourse position, and the pragmatists from the ECB take a “moderate” position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]