Financial Panics and Crises: Cultural and Historical Perspectives
Special issue of the Journal of Cultural Economy
Editor: Mary Poovey
Financial crises come in many varieties. Indeed, as Walter Bagehot
insisted, if one emphasizes the panic phase of what can only
retrospectively be identified as a crisis, instead of the mania that
precedes or the contraction that follows, the economist can identify
several kinds of unsettled economic behavior, any of which might
eventually become a financial crisis. Thus, according to Bagehot, the
1866 collapse of Overend, Gurney, and Co. caused a credit panic; the
scare of 1864 was a bullion panic; and the collapse of the railway
bubble in 1848 sparked a capital panic. In Bagehot?s account, such
periodic eruptions were undoubtedly disruptive, but, as episodes in a
mature nation?s ordinary business cycle, they did not mean that the
modern system of capital was fatally flawed. For Bagehot, a panic,
like the mania that inaugurated it, was ?a calculable, though
unpleasant piece of business? and, as such, grist for the economist?s
mill.
Only time will tell if the current global financial crisis reprises
any of the panic forms that Bagehot identified; only economists of the
future can decide whether the current recession heralds a second
coming of the Great Depression or constitutes an altogether new kind
of economic event. While we wait for the future to access our current
situation, we can learn from past attempts to understand, manage, and
survive financial manias, panics, and crises. This special issue of
the Journal of Cultural Economy addresses the history of financial
upheavals. Topics may include the shortages in coin, bullion, or
other monetary forms, which caused governments to intervene in a
nation?s money supply; debates about how to define or prevent
financial crises; accounts of specific panics and their impact;
varieties of fraud or other criminal behavior that accompanied
speculative booms; the role of the banking industry in various crises;
literary or cultural representations of panics; and the global
repercussions of past crises.
Article length?8,000 words
Deadline for submission of papers? 1 January 2011
Submit papers to (Cultural-Economy /at/ open.ac.uk)
For pre-submission advice contact Mary Poovey: (mary.poovey /at/ nyu.edu)
Journal of Cultural Economy?Editorial Mission
It is now clear that the three main organising concepts of the social
and cultural sciences culture, economy, and the social are each
undergoing a process of significant reinterpretation just as our
understanding of the relations between them is changing equally
rapidly. The Journal of Cultural Economy will serve as a major
international vehicle for the intellectual clarification and empirical
exploration of these developments. Its mission is to promote work
that examines the varied and changing ways in which social, cultural,
technical, and economic networks and practices interact with one
another in complex ways whose analysis requires the abandonment of
attempts to differentiate these as belonging to ontologically separate
realms.
For further details go to http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/17530350.asp
robert wosnitzer
phd candidate | media culture & communication | new york university
239 greene street, seventh floor | new york, ny 10003
(robert.wosnitzer /at/ nyu.edu)
