Leaking panic as policy: Bordering, scaling, and forming in Austrian distributive politics

Author(s)

Andreas Streinzer

Abstract

The article argues for a theoretical vocabulary to analyse how processes of demarcation and exclusion can be accompanied by a language of sharing. The article analyses how neo-nationalist and white supremacist exclusions in Austria were often justified by political panics about ‘leaking’. Leaking panic is a trope in which presumably hideous Others siphon resources from an imagined ‘us’, used for proposing targeted attacks at ‘them’ to secure warm and communal sharing among that imagined ‘us’. I bring this observation to a discussion of recent work in economic anthropology on sharing and its promise for transnational distribution. To theorise how imaginaries of sharing rest on constructions of the community of sharing and distribution, I propose to add bordering, scaling, and forming as auxiliary concepts. I take these theoretical instruments to investigate the cutting of welfare benefits for the children of transnational labourers in the name of ‘fairness for Austrian families’ and the protection of private foundations to defend them from foreign capital through the affectionate language of ‘Austrian family enterprises’. The discussion reveals the importance of understanding demarcation and categorisation to legitimise exclusions by rhetorics of sharing.

Organisation(s)

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

Journal

Anthropological Theory

ISSN

1463-4996

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1177/14634996241311703

Publication date

02-2025

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

504009 Ethnology, 504008 Ethnography

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/d0147e08-1731-4ba0-808a-9afa5a306934