https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Thu, 30 Apr 2020 12:56:34 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/exceptional-normal-or-a-myth-the-discursive-construction-of-the-crisis-by-greek-employees/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:43 +0000 http://arc.local/items/exceptional-normal-or-a-myth-the-discursive-construction-of-the-crisis-by-greek-employees/ Continued]]> This article aims to explore the construction of the concept of the ‘crisis’ by Greek employees, when they talk about paid work. In order to do so, 22 interviews with employees aged 23–43 were analysed, deploying the analytic tool of ‘positioning’, informed by poststructuralist assumptions about discourse and the subject. This perspective seeks to illuminate how the hegemonic discourses both on the ‘crisis’ and waged labour persist and are being legitimated through peoples’ mundane practices and speech, aspiring to trace alternative narratives that challenge them. According to our analysis, the ‘crisis’ was discursively formulated in three different, and at a first glance even contradictory, ways: as a ‘state of exception’, as a ‘normal condition’ and as a ‘myth’, serving each time a different function regarding the constitution of the self and the social.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/a-catalytic-moment-the-greek-crisis-in-the-german-financial-press/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:27 +0000 http://arc.local/items/a-catalytic-moment-the-greek-crisis-in-the-german-financial-press/ Continued]]> The Greek crisis has attracted more public-political attention than any other sovereign debt crisis within the European Union. This article investigates the argument that this is due to the symbolic-catalytic role that the Greek crisis played in forging a specific approach to state rescue and the reform of the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Drawing on assumptions of interpretive-narrative political studies about the discursive construction of crisis and a Critical Discourse Analysis of editorials from the financial press, the study shows how this approach was ‘catalyzed’ by a specific construction of the ‘Greek case’. Reference to the ‘Greek case’, in particular the high level of government debt, rendered austerity a plausible option of crisis management. Reference to the contagion potential of the Greek crisis justified the application of austerity across the Eurozone. The Greek crisis was also seen to reveal the systemic flaws of the EMU and suggest deepened economic integration.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-financial-crisis-in-the-german-and-english-press-metaphorical-structures-in-the-media-coverage-on-greece-spain-and-italy/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:24 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-financial-crisis-in-the-german-and-english-press-metaphorical-structures-in-the-media-coverage-on-greece-spain-and-italy/ Continued]]> The German media presentation of the so-called Greek financial crisis caused an unexpected uproar in Germany. An anti-Greek sentiment evolved and spread among German citizens and solidarity for crisis-hit Greece was mostly rejected. Public surveys revealed that many Germans even wanted Greece to exit the Eurozone immediately. This article highlights the crucial role of the media in shaping the negative public opinion. In 2010, a period which has lately been referred to as Greek bashing, the German press had discussed the Greek financial crisis heatedly and controversially. Europe’s largest daily newspaper, BILD, published numerous reports that implicitly and explicitly constituted the myth of the corrupt and lazy Greeks in comparison to the hard-working Germans. In 2012, the crisis had spread much further, and not only Greece but other countries too were suffering from high debt, economic stagnation and unemployment. The news coverage became more moderate and conciliating and presented the dramatic social consequences for the respective population. This study highlights not only the development of the German media’s tenor on the Greek crisis through time, but adds an international perspective and widens the view by comparing the media treatment of the different countries involved. Based on 122 online articles, the study methodologically focuses on the analysis of metaphorical language in the news coverage of three comparable international news magazines: SPIEGEL (Germany), The Economist (the UK) and TIME (the USA), and contrasts the representation of Greece with the depiction of larger indebted European countries like Spain and Italy. The analysis shows remarkable differences in the evaluation and presentation of the crisis, which can be linked to the degree of involvement of Germany, the UK and the USA in European policies.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-greek-financial-crisis-discourses-of-difference-or-solidarity/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:24 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-greek-financial-crisis-discourses-of-difference-or-solidarity/ Continued]]> The so-called Greek Financial Crisis, which has been the object of close attention in the German media since the end of 2009, has caused a public debate on who should be held responsible for the decline of crisis-hit Greece, the common currency and the Eurozone. The media’s enduring and controversial public discussion has lately been referred to as the Greek bashing. When the crisis had spread much further in 2012 and also other countries suffered from high debt, economic stagnation and unemployment, the news coverage became more moderate. This project report highlights the role of medial discourses of difference and solidarity during the crisis. Therefore, we rely on an exemplary data-set that does not only take the development of the German media’s tenor on the Greek Crisis into consideration, but also adds an international perspective in order to compare the medial treatment of different countries involved. The study methodologically focuses on the analysis of (metaphorical) language and grammatical structures in the news coverage of the German daily newspaper BILD, the German magazine SPIEGEL as well as the international news magazines Economist (Great Britain) and TIME (USA). Therefore, the interdisciplinary approach of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) was used in order to produce insights into public discourses in sociopolitical contexts.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/educational-reform-in-greece-central-concepts-and-a-critique/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:13 +0000 http://arc.local/items/educational-reform-in-greece-central-concepts-and-a-critique/ Continued]]> The case of Greece as the most recent neoliberal experiment can provide valuable insights not only about a generalized attack on the welfare state and the public good, but also about the radical changes in public education that are altering its public mission, vision, and goals. In this paper first we trace the educational landscape in Greece as it emerges both from the reform in primary and secondary education and from the new law 4009 on higher education. The ongoing government discourse on education is shaped and constructed along the lines of a market- driven society and unapologetically espouses the neoliberal dogma that aims to convert education into training, universities into corporations, knowledge into a service or commodity, and students into clients. We further examine the official public discourse as illustrated in government documentation in an attempt to map out the marked shift from the university as a public good to the university as corporate entity, and highlight the particular ways in which this is done. The new educational legislation sets the stage for an education where the individual will thrive through relentless competition, where collectivity is abolished, where only “useful” knowledge counts and where “quality” and “excellence” serve as the excuse for a corporate standardization of the university and the academic life and thought.

]]>