https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:46 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/dismantled-spatial-fixes-in-the-aftermath-of-recession-capital-switching-and-labour-underutilization-in-the-greek-capital-metropolitan-region/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:46 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/dismantled-spatial-fixes-in-the-aftermath-of-recession-capital-switching-and-labour-underutilization-in-the-greek-capital-metropolitan-region/ Continued]]> The article offers a fresh, empirically grounded look at the spatialities of crisis triggered employment forms––a largely overlooked issue in contemporary critical geography literature. Specifically, it discusses the interconnection between investment flows from manufacturing to the built environment (capital switching) and underemployment in urban metropolitan regions to substantiate its impact on emerging spatial fixities. The article, which is based on an empirical analysis informed by a radical political economy, investigates changing fixed capital formations in Greece over an extended period prior to and during the recession, from 1995 to 2012. It traces the evolution of part-time waged work in the capital metropolitan region of Attica (Athens) vis-à-vis the rest of the country’s regional labour markets, focusing on the polarized 2005–2012 period and the demise of the construction industry. The article highlights that ‘disrupted’ capital switching that occurred in Greece, closely associated with recalibrated sectoral priorities and institutional interventions, resulted in the uneven sprawling of underemployment. Our findings offer insight into how the dismantling of spatial fixes within core metropolitan regions of the southern European Union (and beyond) are connected to labour surplus and successive slumps in manufacturing and construction. The article closes by calling for new theorizations of contemporary urban regional unevenness and its spatiotemporal fixities, which account for the role of changes in labour turnover time.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/media-and-the-economic-crisis-of-the-eu-the-culturalization-of-a-systemic-crisis-and-bild-zeitungs-framing-of-greece/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:41 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/media-and-the-economic-crisis-of-the-eu-the-culturalization-of-a-systemic-crisis-and-bild-zeitungs-framing-of-greece/ Continued]]> This article critically studies the hegemonic discursive construction of the EU’s current (2012) economic crisis, as it is articulated by political and economic elites and by mass media. The study focuses on the political economy of the particular crisis and through the critical concept of reification, the study emphasizes the hegemonic naturalization of the economic crisis by the “free market” economistic ideology. The article problematizes the positioning of Greece as the “crisis epicentre” in Europe, understanding Greece as a scapegoat and as a laboratory where political strategies of capitalist restructuring of the EU are performed. Through the frame analysis of Bild-zeitung’s headlines on the coverage of crisis-struck Greece, the article discusses a) the “culturalization” of the crisis and the diversion from a structural public debate on the global economic crisis b) the disciplinary function of crisis’ publicity, related to social control and the production of new, neoliberal social subjectivities c) the alienating effect of the culturalist crisis discourses to transnational publics, resulting to the misrecognition of the ideological and structural reasons of the given crisis, the misrecognition of the effects of the crisis and crisis-politics in people’s lives, the misrecognition of popular socio-political struggles in countries worse struck by crisis politics, and the eclipse of transnational solidarity and identification to the common issues that European people in particular are facing.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/austerity-discourses-in-der-spiegel-journal-2009-2014/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:54 +0000 http://arc.local/items/austerity-discourses-in-der-spiegel-journal-2009-2014/ Continued]]> This article looks at the ways mainstream media discuss austerity and its failure to reach its
proclaimed goals, to reduce public debt and to boost productivity in the heavily indebted countries of
the Eurozone’s periphery. This study analyzed Der Spiegel’s articles presenting the crisis and austerity in Europe, focusing on the Greek case, from 2009 until 2014. A thematic analysis was developed in
the study a broad corpus of articles, focusing on the main ideas they unfold. Deploying critical political
economy literature, critical cultural theory and critical media studies literature, the article criticizes the
neoliberal hegemony of the EU’s crisis politics and foregrounds the role of mainstream media, including progressivist or objectivist ones such as Spiegel, in the reproduction of neoliberal ideas that expand far beyond the crisis, to produce the institutions, social relations, beliefs and subjectivities for a
post-crisis configuration of capitalism. The article concludes that Spiegel, like other mainstream media,
produce a biopolitical policing of the crisis’ exceptionalized subjects (the citizens of indebted countries)
and the implementation of crisis-politics by creating a public “structure of feeling” related to the hegemonic crisis’ rationales. These rationales are further connected to the development of the new neoliberal subjectivity, which is an objective of the crisis-reforms, such as austerity regimes. In effect, mainstream media discourses reproduce the hegemonic frames of the

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/dangers-of-an-urban-crisis-within-the-european-union-fueling-xenophobia-and-undermining-democracy/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:45 +0000 http://arc.local/items/dangers-of-an-urban-crisis-within-the-european-union-fueling-xenophobia-and-undermining-democracy/ Continued]]> The global economic and financial crisis of 2007-08 has further intensified a social and urban crisis that undermines democracy and economic institutions internationally. Specifically, the economic crisis and the consequent austerity measures have resulted in greater exploitation in the labor market and job discrimination, in capital flight and undermined political and social institutions that provide for citizens. Xenophobia becomes again a burgeoning problem that is plaguing the European Union (EU) and needs to be addressed thoroughly for it can again undermine the democratic tradition of the region. This article concentrates on perspectives on the current migration crisis within the region of the EU that has spurred a spiral of xenophobic tendencies and a neo-liberal nationalist narrative. Particular emphasis is placed in the situations in Greece (the much attested “guinea pig” of the democratic experiment) and Italy.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/financial-crisis-and-higher-education-policies-in-greece-between-intra-and-supranational-pressures/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:38 +0000 http://arc.local/items/financial-crisis-and-higher-education-policies-in-greece-between-intra-and-supranational-pressures/ Continued]]> The current financial crisis is blamed for the proliferation of neoliberal policies in Greek universities. However, this article argues that the imposition of relevant policies has wider causes linked to contradictions observed during the democratization and modernization of universities over the last 40 years. At the same time policymakers are seeking ‘external’ support to mitigate the doubts of pressure groups, such as academic staff, students, and mass media, regarding the need to implement unpopular reforms in Greek universities. Set against this political backdrop, the present article argues that the references of the Greek political leadership to European discourse about universities are a strategy to build alliances within the country for the promotion of neoliberal reforms in the field of tertiary education. The implementation of these reforms has been facilitated through the financial crisis, which has pressured the Greek governments to take immediate measures for the sake of the ‘national economy’.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/crisis-austerity-and-opposition-in-mainstream-media-discourses-of-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:28 +0000 http://arc.local/items/crisis-austerity-and-opposition-in-mainstream-media-discourses-of-greece/ Continued]]> This article analyzes neoliberal articulations of the economic crisis in Greece, as they appear at the Ekathimerini daily. Neoliberalism is primarily understood as the ideology organizing the political strategies of late capitalist production. The analysis focuses on the ways the capitalist crisis is presented in the context of Greece, as well as the ways that socio-political opposition to neoliberal reforms are addressed. Ekathimerini reproduces the hegemonic explanations of the crisis that view the crisis as a national and moral problem rather than a global and systemic one. The analysis draws concepts from both discourse theory and critical theory. Discourse theory analyzes the neoliberal discourse organizing the political interventions for the reproduction of capitalism in the crisis-context, while political economy critiques the materiality of the capitalist process, which itself is based on discourses and political interventions. The article concludes that Ekathimerini’s crisis-coverage contributes to the form of social engineering organized by neoliberal policies in Greece, in order to produce the political and social norms for a post-crisis configuration of capitalism.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/from-bad-to-worse-reflections-on-the-crisis-in-greece-and-in-europe/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:27 +0000 http://arc.local/items/from-bad-to-worse-reflections-on-the-crisis-in-greece-and-in-europe/ What are the consequences of the radical measures taken in Greece since the beginning of the crisis? thile discussing the positve and negatve efects of the Troika therapLJ in Greece, this essaLJ gives an overview of the politcal situaton in Greece and Europe, and discusses the dangers for democracLJ in the EU.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/whatever-happened-to-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:17 +0000 http://arc.local/items/whatever-happened-to-greece/ Continued]]> The sovereign debt crisis in Greece and other periphery countries is a yardstick for the viability of the European project: if Greece defaults and exits the Euro‐zone, then the entire European architecture will be questioned. This article examines the origins of the Greek debt crisis and argues that the key sources of the debt are the economic and political factions that have dominated Greek politics since the fall of the Colonels in summer 1974 amidst the Cyprus calamity. These factions (political parties, comprador economic interests etc.), whose policy actions and preferences are amalgamated with the interests of Euro‐Atlantic elites, are now being severely undermined, both politically and economically, as the prosperity of the Greek middle classes is eroded following two years of harsh austerity measures imposed on the Greek ruling factions by those Euro‐Atlantic elites. Furthermore, this article outlines ways out of the Greek debt crisis, putting into test some reasonable policy proposals that are being widely discussed in Greece and abroad.

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