ABSTRACT
‘BRIC’ is the well-known acronym for Brazil, Russia, India and China. It was coined by Jim O’Neill, at the time Goldman Sachs’ Chief Economist, when he watched the television broadcast of the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. He began to imagine a new way of thinking about ‘growth’ that could transcend national perspectives and look beyond the West. With the onset of the 2007 financial crisis, this imaginary gained fresh popularity and was reinvented through the concerted efforts of diverse national and transnational forces (for example, international investment banks, economic strategists, international organizations, think tanks, national governments and business media corporations). In this light, my chapter explores the development of discourses and practices of BRIC, considering them as economic and financial imaginaries from a CPE perspective. Such imaginaries often involve a search for ‘growth’, hope’ and ‘strength’ during specific economic conjunctures, especially periods of crisis.
