Front and Back Covers, Volume 33, Number 5. October 2017

Cover caption, volume 33 issue 5 Covers ALTERNATIVES TO AUSTERITY ‘The Greek Burger’ graffiti in Athens (front cover) and popular protest slogan (back cover). Since the onset of the economic crisis, street art has increasingly expressed concern over current and future living conditions and national and European politics. In our age of austerity, set ideas circulate about the 2008 crisis and how to resolve it. On the left, the neoliberal regime is blamed. Advocated are: international tax regimes, progressive taxation, investment in eco‐technologies and the co‐production of social services. The right proposes solutions such as: universal basic income, financial inclusion or a libertarian tearing down of bureaucracy to release creativity. This special issue is devoted to a deeper analysis of what austerity actually is and suggestions for its alternatives. Contributors track the impact of austerity in Greece, India, Italy and the UK. In particular, they follow the effects of exploitative PPPs, welfare schemes that financialize and blame the victim, assaults on social housing and the financialisation of water. Citizens in these countries, and others, are now suffering under the burdens of sovereign debt, international bailouts, cuts in public spending and high levels of personal financial destitution. What can be done to reduce this inequality generated by austerity policies across the world? The articles argue that new kinds of policy and politics are needed that prioritize social rather than financial aims for government spending. These would focus on institutional reform to give precedence to longer‐term goals than those set by the market. This special issue also challenges readers to imagine alternative political possibilities. We show that a key starting point could be a reimagining of the economy to serve the interests of people and the planet (the ‘eco‐social’). There would also need to be a redistribution of power in financial decision‐making, new institutional design of the relations between governments and markets, a redistribution of offshore corporate profits and greater experimentation with utopias of social solidarity and resistance.