Neoliberalism and the New Agora: Exploring Survival, Emergence, and Political Subjectivity Among Pluralized Subaltern Communities in Athens, Greece

Abstract

In the wake of the Greek economic crisis, pluralized groups of subalterns are coming together across Athens to take advantage of new, post-bailout, below-the-radar work opportunities. This article follows one such group consisting of an undocumented migrant from Mauritania and a small group of Roma (Gypsies), as they established an undocumented transportation business. It probes the complex relationship between subjective identity formation and the emergence of new modes of collective political agency in neoliberal contexts. By adapting work-related techniques of survival, members of the transport group and their broader networks are creating public spaces of multivalent political intensity.

Introduction—Uncertain Visions: Crisis, Ambiguity, and Visual Culture in Greece

“…Most works about the current phase of Greek history converge on partly affirming that it constitutes a crisis, often defined with reference to structural reforms aiming at reducing the country's deficit (Knight ; Papailias ) and formalizing its economy (Rakopoulos ). Works also link the crisis to recession and to conditions disenfranchising groups already on the margins (Alexandrakis ), changing one's attachment to history and place (Knight ; Vournelis ), engendering anxiety regarding one's position in Europe or creating bitterness about a “present becoming damaged future” (Herzfeld ; Kalantzis , ), and securitizing daily life (Dalakoglou ). These observations, in some ways, corroborate other anthropological accounts of the dominance of debt as a category in global socioeconomic affairs (e.g., High :363).…”

“…Some describe the present through notions of exception and emergency, ideas that have been critiqued in the crisis literature for reproducing Eurocentric notions of normalcy that ironically inform Greece's classification outside of the Western canon (Rakopoulos :193). Various authors retain a sanguine approach to the new political formations such as the subjects emerging in the 2011 lower Syntagma Square protests (Panourgiá ) and those subalterns realizing themselves as members of a collectivity through texting each other or playing football (Alexandrakis :86, 95). The sanguinity may also relate to a desire to counter the Orientalism in global representations of Greece (Papailias ), though I would add here that the most poignant element of Orientalism is often not its negativity (this is anyway complicated on many occasions by positivity), but the demand that people conform to particular definitions purported by onlookers in more powerful positions (cf.…”

Creolized Conservation: A Belizean Creole Community Encounters a Wildlife Sanctuary

“…While earlier analyses typically viewed "local" in terms of resistance and "global" in terms of domination, in more recent years theorists have followed Appadurai (1996) in noting how transnational processes necessarily generate disjuncture, and confound any dualistic reading of global and local. A range of scholars have examined how cultural forms are generated as peoples, cultural productions, and political economies come into contact across structures of inequality (e.g., Alexandrakis 2013;Ferguson 2006;Ong 1999;Tsing 2005;Wilk 1995Wilk , 2006). Yet, many of these, while paying close attention to how specific places and peoples engage with "global" processes and often mold or appropriate them, do not closely examine how what is seen as "global" (e.g., capitalism, neoliberal policy, consumer culture) came to be.…”

The Year 2013 in Sociocultural Anthropology: Cultures of Circulation and Anthropological Facts

“…A number of anthropologists studied citizenship and belonging at the margins of the state. As Greek citizens expressed “indignation” about the national economic crisis and state austerity measures in protests and everyday conversation (Theodossopoulos ), some undocumented migrants benefited by establishing transportation networks to move black and grey market goods (Alexandrakis ). Over time, these migrants began to attend visible public gatherings like soccer games near the ancient agora—where citizens were first made some 2,500 years ago—and “began to think as citizens about a shared form of life” (Alexandrakis :95).…”

“…As Greek citizens expressed “indignation” about the national economic crisis and state austerity measures in protests and everyday conversation (Theodossopoulos ), some undocumented migrants benefited by establishing transportation networks to move black and grey market goods (Alexandrakis ). Over time, these migrants began to attend visible public gatherings like soccer games near the ancient agora—where citizens were first made some 2,500 years ago—and “began to think as citizens about a shared form of life” (Alexandrakis :95). Meanwhile, other immigrants pursued legal status in Greece and worked with NGO staff to coproduce life histories that served as convincing “pictures” of victimhood and vulnerability for asylum applications—narratives that were often at odds with how the immigrants thought about themselves (Cabot ).…”