Speaker(s): Dr Laura Bear, Anna Coote, Dr Andrea Muehlebach, Dr Carly Schuster | This panel discussion will look beyond the present into a future without austerity. Participants will discuss the proposals for a social calculus to be applied to government policy and sovereign debt relations as proposed in Laura Bear’s recent book, Navigating Austerity: currents of debt along a South Asian River (Stanford University Press 2015). How can we develop new forms of policy and politics that prioritise social rather than financial aims for government spending? How might we reform financial institutions so as to give precedence to longer-term goals than those set by market? What can be done to reduce the inequality generated by austerity policies in the UK and across the world? Can we imagine utopian institutions and social movements that could generate abundance, mutual and environmental protection? Laura Bear is Associate Professor of Anthropology at LSE and author of Navigating Austerity: Cur
