Social Resistance to Austerity: Polanyi's 'Double Movement' in the Context of the Crisis in Greece

The crisis in Greece: questions of economy, state and democracy

“…How do you analyze the current political situation in Greece? Maria Markantonatou: As in other crisis-ridden countries, the Polanyian "double movement," if we put it that way (Markantonatou, 2014), was expressed antithetically in Greece too, causing, through a series of electoral earthquakes since 2010, the transformation of the last decades' political landscape. The left-wing SYRIZA rose impressively from 4.6 percent of the vote in 2009, to 36.4 percent in January 2015 and it suffered only slight losses after its controversial management of the July 2015 referendum's outcome.…”

“…She had been a fellow at the Max Planck Institute Cologne, Germany and is a Senior Fellow at the Research Group Post-Growth Societies at the Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany. Her analysis of the crisis in Greece (Markantonatou, 2013(Markantonatou, , 2014(Markantonatou, , 2016 has drawn international attention in many professional discussions and broader audiences. Her work includes a profound analysis of the economic, social and political structure and development of contemporary capitalism and the deep going processes of transformation as well as a reflection on everyday life experience.…”

Polanyian perspectives on the movements and countermovements of "our time": an introduction

“…A vast array of analyses and diagnoses of these developments depict their dynamics from different angles: the erosion of the post-war order understood as the end of Fordism and the beginning of an alleged post-Fordist era since the 1970s; the increasing economic liberalisation politically imposed and accompanied by neoliberal governance since the 1980s; the collapse of state socialism after 1989 and the new phase of globalisation along with the consolidation of capitalism; the finance driven economic development culminating in the 2008/9 crisis and subsequent austerity schemes; digitalisation; labour disputes, and primarily new forms of progressive social protest, the increasing influence of right-wing movements and the (re-)emergence of illiberal democracies and authoritarian regimes (e.g. Burawoy 2015Burawoy , 2017Campani and Sauer 2017;Della Porta 2017;Fabry 2019;Markantonatou 2014;Streeck 2014).…”

Real distributive and emancipatory dilemmas within disability policy regimes : comparative perspectives with a focus on Switzerland

“…Furthermore, austerity measures and funding cuts after the financial and sovereign debt crises led to the breakdown of the local authority's home help services or restrained planned extensions of policies supporting independent living (Hauben, Coucheir, Spooren, McAnaney & Delfosse, 2012: 34;40). Overall, the resolution of the redistributive conflict between the Greek society on the one hand and the international financial markets and the troika (the European Central Bank, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund) on the other hand has been resolved in favour of marketisation, fiscal stability, and the stabilisation of free market processes; thus, in a Polanyian sense, it is in favour of marketisation (Markantonatou, 2014). This will strain any extensions of redistributive policies.…”