Paper short abstract:

In Spain, economic crisis and the dismantling of state forms of provisioning have recently given rise to a growing demand for dignity among large social sectors. This paper explores the paradoxical, contradictory relationship that this demand maintains with the erosion of a loosely defined Fordism.

Paper long abstract:

In 2008, Spain plunged into an ongoing economic crisis. Working class impoverishment and job scarcity have been compounded by the implementation of severe austerity policies that have further eroded an already precarious welfare state. The experience of the crisis has thus undermined and put in doubt the main hallmarks of Fordism—such as mass employment, the protective state, and the supposedly universal possibility to reach middle class status. In parallel, there have emerged a series of popular mobilizations criticizing the inequality and injustice of the current situation. This paper focuses on one striking characteristic of these mobilizations: the central role that they place on the demand of dignity. How are we to understand this demand? What relation does it maintain with the erosion of the Fordist framework of socioeconomic organization? To explore this question, I will leave behind the urban middle classes and the plazas where the indignados staged their revolt, and focus my attention on the semi-proletarian livelihoods of the inhabitants of Southern Catalonia. In this impoverished rural region, claims for dignity have saturated the sphere of the political since the 1970s, a circumstance that, I argue, has to do with the fact that there Fordist aspirations always remained elusive. My contention is that the Southern Catalan case offers a privileged window to understand the material conditions and practical consciousness that give rise to the current demand for dignity in Spain, allowing us to analyze the political content of this demand and its relationships with a vanishing Fordism