Abstract
Taking our bearings from Stuart Hall’s essay from 1982, ‘The rediscovery of “ideology”: return of the repressed in media studies’, we argue in this discussion piece for the need to pick up the tools of ideology critique once again. Quite simply, the contemporary moment where accelerating inequality is masked by blame of the poor and of migrants demands it. The case is made first through a critique of ideological responses to the economic crisis after 2008. Then in the final section we examine advocacy of ‘social mobility’ in the public sphere, an ideological project if ever there was one.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Bamfield
L
Horton
T
(2009 ) Understanding Attitudes to Tackling Inequality . York : Joseph Rowntree Foundation .
2.
Blanden
J
Gregg
P
Machin
S
(2005 ) Social mobility in Britain: low and falling . Centrepiece . Available at: http://cep.lse.ac.uk/centrepiece/v10i1/blanden.pdf (accessed June 2014 ).
3.
Boltanski
L
Chiapello
E
(2006 ) The New Spirit of Capitalism . London : Verso .
4.
Boyle
R
Kelly
L
(2012 ) The Television Entrepreneurs: Social Change and Public Understanding of Business . Farnham : Ashgate .
5.
Crouch
C
(2011 ) The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism . Cambridge : Polity .
6.
Downey
J
(2008 ) Recognition and the renewal of ideology critique . In:
Hesmondhalgh
D
Toynbee
J
(eds) The Media and Social Theory . London : Routledge .
7.
Duggan
L
(2003 ) The Twilight of Equality: Neoliberalism, Cultural Politics and the Attack on Democracy . Boston, MA : Beacon Press .
8.
Dumenil
G
Levy
D
(2011 ) The Crisis of Neoliberalism . Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press .
9.
Elliott
L et al
. (2013 ) IMF admits: we failed to realize the damage austerity would do to Greece . The Guardian , 5 June . Available at: www.theguardian.com/business/2013/jun/05/imf-underestimated-damage-austerity-would-do-to-greece (accessed 28 June 2014 ).
10.
Golding
P
Middleton
S
(1982 ) Images of Welfare: Press and Public Attitudes to Poverty . Oxford : Basil Blackwell .
11.
Graeber
D
(2011 ) Debt: The First 5,000 Years . New York : Melville House .
12.
Hall
S
(1988 ) The rediscovery of ‘ideology’: return of the repressed in media studies . In:
Gurevitch
M
Bennett
T
Curran
J
Woollacot
J
(eds) Culture, Society and the Media . London : Routledge .
13.
Krugman
P
(2013 ) How the case for austerity has crumbled . The New York Review of Books , 6 June .
14.
Lowenthal
L
(1943 ) Biographies in popular magazines . Available at: http://jat.uky.edu/~jhertog/CJT_765/Readings/Lowenthal_BiographiesInPopularMags.pdf (accessed June 2014 ).
15.
Manning
P
(2013 ) Financial journalism, news sources and the banking crisis . Journalism 14 (2 ): 173 –189 .
16.
McNally
D
(2010 ) Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance . Oakland, CA : PM Press .
17.
Mercille
J
(2013 ) The role of the media in sustaining Ireland’s housing bubble . New Political Economy 19 (2 ): 282 –301 .
18.
Peck
J
(2010 ) Constructions of Neoliberal Reason . Oxford : Oxford University Press .
19.
Poole
S
(2011 ) Austerity measures: enhancing the credibility deficit . Unspeak . Available at: http://unspeak.net/2011/01/ (accessed 12 April 2013 ).
20.
Reinhart
CM
Rogoff
KS
(2010 ) Growth in a time of debt . American Economic Review 100 (2 ): 573 –578 .
21.
Streeck
W
(2011 ) The crises of democratic capitalism . New Left Review 71 .
22.
Streeck
W
(2012 ) Markets and peoples: democratic capitalism and European integration . New Left Review 73 .
23.
Thompson
J
(1990 ) Ideology and Modern Culture . Cambridge : Polity .
24.
Tyler
I
(2013 ) Revolting Subjects: Abjection and Resistance in Neoliberal Britain . London : Zed Books .
25.
Whitehead
R
Vandore
E
Nathan
M
(2012 ) A Tale of Tech City . London : Centre for London . Available at: http://www.demos.co.uk/files/A_Tale_of_Tech_City_web.pdf?1340965124 (accessed June 2014 ).
26.
Williams
R
(2013 ) ‘I’m experiencing austerity as well’, says Princess Michael of Kent . The Independent , 9 December .