Resonance of Solidarity: Meanings of a Local Concept in Anti-austerity Greece

Rakopoulos, Theodoros

doi:10.1353/mgs.2014.0040

Cited by 45 publications

(35 citation statements)

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“…Indeed, it was around that period that a civic drive towards self-organisation, self-management and selfempowerment began to emerge with the (informal) establishment of several self-managed spaces, social centres and local citizen initiatives [31]. These events also formed the ground for what became the occupation of the Syntagma square in the summer of 2011 and the initiation of grassroots collectives whose goal was to address basic needs while raising issues of democracy and social justice [31,43]. Syntagma square events, aligned with the Spanish 'indignados' and as well as a host of other 'occupy' movements around the globe, were an experiment of horizontal democracy and empowerment through participation and self-organisation [31].…”

Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

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HCI, Solidarity Movements and the Solidarity Economy

Vlachokyriakos

Crivellaro

Wright

et al. 2017

Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

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The financial crisis and austerity politics in Europe has had a devastating impact on public services, social security and vulnerable populations. Greek civil society responded quickly by establishing solidarity structures aimed at helping vulnerable citizens to meet their basic needs and empower them to co-create an anti-austerity movement. While digital technology and social media played an important role in the initiation of the movement, it has a negligible role in the movement's ongoing practices. Through embedded work with several solidarity structures in Greece, we have begun to understand the 'solidarity economy' (SE) as an experiment in direct democracy and self-organization. Working with a range of solidarity structures we are developing a vision for a 'Solidarity HCI' committed to designing to support personal, social and institutional transformation through processes of agonistic pluralism and contestation, where the aims and objectives of the SE are continuously re-formulated and put into practice.

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Section: Contextmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Finally, as key tool of the SE, popular assemblies are considered an important vehicle for the members' political education (as also discussed in [43]). Political education through engagement, both within and outside the assembly was a recurrent theme in discussions.…”

Section: Assemblies and Self-organizationmentioning

confidence: 99%

HCI, Solidarity Movements and the Solidarity Economy

Vlachokyriakos

Crivellaro

Wright

et al. 2017

Proceedings of the 2017 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Indeed, in 2010 the Greek state deployed a crisis narrative along with neoliberal austerity policy, effectively reducing political discourse to concerns with economic management and focusing political action on safeguarding the pervasive functions of the market. Yet as Athenians began to suffer austerity-driven injuries such as poverty, growing shame, and deepening demoralization, innovative if sometimes unconventional resistance actions such as alternative economies, solidarity collectives, and barter networks (Rakopoulos 2014) began to proliferate. Far from effecting a total inactivation and depletion of agency, sites of intense precaritization also became sites of mobilization and the politicization of shared suffering (Roitman 2014, 12).…”

Section: Crisis and Critiquementioning

confidence: 99%

Incidental Activism: Graffiti and Political Possibility in Athens, Greece

Alexandrakis

2016

Cult. Anthropol.

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Based on field research in Athens, Greece, this essay considers graffiti as a mode of political response to the material and symbolic violences of neoliberal governmentality. In 2010, the Greek state declared sovereign debt crisis and began to implement an aggressive austerity program in exchange for economic aid from a troika of international lenders. This resulted in the dismantling of public services, tax increases, salary and pension reductions, layoffs, and, generally, the impoverishment of the middle and lower classes. In this work I consider a crew of three young graffiti writers, both before and during the years of the crisis, as they came to realize a fear of becoming integrated into an economized social mainstream and responded by creating street art intended to bolster critical reasoning among Athenians. I argue that fear of abjection and the experience of being at the social margins served as a stimulus of critical agency, and that the crew's intervention can be considered indirect activism: a mode of resistance whose critical agents attempt to bring about their ambitions and visions by activating other groups to undertake resistance of their own. I show how my interlocutors made political possibility by creating art that lessened the capacity of neoliberal governmentality to manufacture consent, thereby contributing to a thriving ecology of resistance action in Athens.

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“…Long before what has come to be known as the ‘European refugee crisis’ in 2015, in the 2000s there was already an established ‘asylum crisis’ in Greece: applications were slowly examined, the refugee status was rarely attributed and the reception infrastructure was practically non‐existent (Cabot ). Despite the fact that solidarity was still far from a ‘bridge‐concept’ (see Introduction in this issue) or an ‘all‐encompassing notion’ (Rakopoulos : 98), for Melina and her fellows it was a powerful emic category that fuelled their endeavours. Whereas normative discourses then saw an ‘underdevelopment’ of volunteerism in Greece (Rozakou ), this small group demonstrated remarkable persistence in ‘approaching’ refugees.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Socialities of solidarity: revisiting the gift taboo in times of crises

Rozakou

2016

Social Anthropology

134

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This article addresses solidarity and the opening of social spaces in the relations between refugees and residents of Greece who try to help them. ‘Socialities of solidarity’ materialise alternative worldviews; they are loci for the production of lateral relationships; places inhabited by the prospects that derive from the political production of sociality. The article discusses the ‘gift taboo’, dominant in the pre‐crisis era, that reflects the risks of giving to the formation of horizontal relationships. In the contemporary ‘European refugee crisis, and other crises, the gift taboo has collapsed, posing challenges to the egalitarian visions of sociality.

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Resonance of Solidarity: Meanings of a Local Concept in Anti-austerity Greece

Cited by 45 publications

References 44 publications

HCI, Solidarity Movements and the Solidarity Economy

HCI, Solidarity Movements and the Solidarity Economy

Incidental Activism: Graffiti and Political Possibility in Athens, Greece

Socialities of solidarity: revisiting the gift taboo in times of crises

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