Description
This paper directs attention to contemporary everyday contestations of national growth models, putting into conversation recent developments in everyday political economy and comparative capitalisms research. Further developing existing scholarship, we argue that the everyday is a crucial site for the (de)legitimation of dominant economic structures or sectors, which can be driven by top-down, elite efforts, and/or by bottom-up, citizen- and civil society-led endeavours. To illustrate these mechanisms, the paper utilises a dual case design that zooms in on Trump’s US-China trade war and on the popular discontent against tourism in Spain. The trade war was not designed by everyday agents, but Trump and elite policymakers have managed to present it back to the American people in ways that resonate with their broader everyday experiences. By using narratives such as “China is stealing our jobs”, we argue that Trump is seeking to gain everyday legitimacy by contesting structures of the global and of the US economy. The Spanish case, on the other hand, illustrates how everyday experiences can be what sets dynamics of contestation against a growth model in motion. We argue that while the tourism industry has long been at the core of Spain’s capitalist model, everyday forces are increasingly and publicly contesting its legitimacy, highlighting its perceived negative effects on locals and cities. In this way, we bring attention to how the macrocharacteristics of a national capitalist type interact with the experiences of its everyday agents, showcasing how essential the latter are for the former’s reproduction and/or contestation.
