Satyajit Das commented on the geographical framing of financial crises:

European politicians and central bankers have provided useful geographical clarifications. Prior to succumbing to the inevitable, the Ireland told everyone that they were not Greece. Portugal is now telling everyone that it is not Greece or Ireland. Spain insists that it is not Greece, Ireland or Portugal. Italy says it is not in the “PIGS”. Belgium insists it was no “B” in “PIGS” or “PIIGS”.

Although never defined, in these discourses “Greece” becomes the spatial figure for an economic guilt complex, labelled as the geographical site of our own fears of disentitlement and moral discourses condemning profligacy.

At the same time as pointing out this process of spatialisation of crisis, the article turns on metaphors of economic “contagion”.  The understandings of flow, transmission and mobilities embedded in the idea of contagion have been critiqued by authors such as Van Loon, Anderson, Street and Nicols over many years in Space and Culture.

-Rob Shields (University of Alberta)