https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:52 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/feeling-the-pulse-of-the-greek-debt-crisis-affect-on-the-web-of-blame/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:52 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/feeling-the-pulse-of-the-greek-debt-crisis-affect-on-the-web-of-blame/ Continued]]> This article examines the affective content of Greek media representations of the debt crisis, from 2009 to 2012. We analyze the content of opinion pieces from journalists, experts and public intellectuals published in Greek newspapers, and identify their affective tone towards political actors and institutions. We focus on anger, fear and hope, and identify blame attribution frames, which underpin the public’s trust and confidence in domestic and European Union institutions. This article contributes to the systematic understanding of the impact of the debt crisis as a traumatic event on public opinion, and considers its implications for attitudes towards European integration.

]]> 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/behind-the-veil-of-philoxenia-the-politics-of-immigration-detention-in-greece-2/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:22 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/behind-the-veil-of-philoxenia-the-politics-of-immigration-detention-in-greece-2/ Continued]]> This article sets out to summarise the policies, practices and experiences of immigration detention in contemporary Greece, as well as outlining how they have been critiqued domestically andinternationally. The article proceeds to address the ways in which the Greek state has reacted to criticisms and pressures for reform, especially from abroad. It is argued that neither domestic nor international interventions have succeeded in bringing about substantive progressive change in the Greek immigration detention system. Rather, Greek state authorities have systematically neutralised criticisms by employing an array of rhetorical techniques, most notably through evocation of philoxenia (broadly meaning hospitality to foreigners and strangers more generally) as a natural trait common to all Greeks. In addition to highlighting the dubious and paradoxical dimensions of the rhetorical defences deployed by the state in Greece, particularly concerning its discourse of philoxenia, the article goes on to discuss the main socio-political functions that have subtly been served inside the country’s borders through maintenance of deplorable policies and practices of immigration detention, including the symbolic management of public anxieties in accordance with what may be termed the ‘more eligibility’ principle. In pointing to these functions, the article helps to explain why the Greek state persists in making use of rhetoric that is blatantly indefensible and bound to attract further disapprobation.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/punitive-inclusion-the-political-economy-of-irregular-migration-in-the-margins-of-europe/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:21 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/punitive-inclusion-the-political-economy-of-irregular-migration-in-the-margins-of-europe/ Continued]]> Focusing on the treatment irregular migrants have received in Greece since the early 1990s, this article seeks to advance critical scholarship on how European countries have responded to migration from impoverished or otherwise disadvantaged parts of the globe over recent decades. The article first draws attention to ways in which purportedly exclusionary approaches to irregular migration control may be imperfect by design, insofar as restrictions are imposed on outflows to secure an exploitable workforce that serves important labour market needs and, by extension, dominant political interests in the ‘host’ state. Moving on to address the precise ways in which labour exploitation of irregular migrants is brought into effect, the article demonstrates how seemingly unrelated state policies and practices regarding matters of migration, welfare, employment and criminal justice, as well as certain manifestations of anti-migrant violence by non-state actors, may act in combination with one another to this end.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/crime-and-economic-downturn-the-complexity-of-crime-and-crime-politics-in-greece-since-2009/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:20 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/crime-and-economic-downturn-the-complexity-of-crime-and-crime-politics-in-greece-since-2009/ Continued]]> Description and explanation of the relationship between economic downturn and crime have to date been limited by the narrow scope of criminal activity characteristically selected as a focus by pertinent criminological scholarship. Efforts to examine the relationship have overwhelmingly approached it through the prism of common property and violent offences, or, and to a lesser degree, white-collar crime. As a consequence, appreciation has been impeded of the existence and heightened political significance of diverse and complex connections between a wider array of forms of criminality during times of economic downturn. To demonstrate the value of such connections to the study of the relationship between economic downturn and crime, we draw on the contemporary experience of crisis-hit Greece, where the political importance of associations between corruption, common property and violent offences, and illicit political violence, has made them indispensable components of any account of the linkages between economic downturn and crime in the Greek context.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/dispatches-from-the-greek-lab-metaphors-strategies-and-debt-in-the-european-crisis/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:16 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/dispatches-from-the-greek-lab-metaphors-strategies-and-debt-in-the-european-crisis/ Continued]]> This field note is a first attempt to reflect on the choreography of the European crisis from a psychosocial perspective. It focuses on the situation as it has been unfolding in one of the debtor countries of the South, namely Greece. After mapping a variety of metaphors, repertoires and strategies used to energise blame and guilt and thus legitimise the neoliberal policies implemented, it elaborates on the multiple functions of debt, articulating a biopolitical approach with Freudian and Lacanian theorisations of the superego. It also inscribes within this framework the current mutations in political domination.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/a-new-populism-index-at-work-identifying-populist-candidates-and-parties-in-the-contemporary-greek-context/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:12 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/a-new-populism-index-at-work-identifying-populist-candidates-and-parties-in-the-contemporary-greek-context/ Continued]]> Interrogating available indexes from a discourse-theoretical point of view, this paper utilizes a reformulated populism index in order to identify populist parties. In particular, the index is applied in a candidate survey carried out in Greece in 2015. Findings indicate that this index allows for a clear differentiation between populist and non-populist parties. Based on candidate attitudes, SYRIZA and ANEL belong to the first group whereas New Democracy, PASOK and River to the second. The examination of additional survey items reveals a clear ideological division within the populist camp: right-wing populism is exclusionary, while left-wing populism more inclusive and pluralist.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/european-populist-parties-in-government-how-well-are-voters-represented-evidence-from-greece/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:11 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/european-populist-parties-in-government-how-well-are-voters-represented-evidence-from-greece/ Continued]]> In this paper we focus on the two populist parties, one radical left and one radical right, that have formed a coalition government after the January 2015 elections in Greece: SYRIZA and Independent Greeks (ANEL). Using data from the Greek Candidate Study 2015 and the Greek Voter Study 2015 we study the congruence between party voters and party elites for these two parties, also comparing them with mainstream, non‐populist parties. Employing a slightly modified ‘many to many’ approach, we measure congruence on a variety of issues (economic policy, austerity, Euroscepticism, immigration, law and order) and ideological divides (left/right, populism/anti‐populism) in order to assess the factors explaining the paradoxical resilience of Greek populism in power. The evidence generated can help us account for the trajectory of political antagonism in the Greek context throughout 2015 and in drawing some broader conclusions and challenges for future populism research.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-populism-anti-populism-frontier-and-its-mediation-in-crisis-ridden-greece-from-discursive-divide-to-emerging-cleavage/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:09 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/the-populism-anti-populism-frontier-and-its-mediation-in-crisis-ridden-greece-from-discursive-divide-to-emerging-cleavage/ Continued]]> Along with other South-European countries, since 2008, Greece has experienced deep economic and social dislocation, leading to a crisis of representation and triggering populist mobilisations and anti-populist reactions. This article focuses on the antagonistic language games developed around populist representations, something that has not attracted much attention in the relevant literature. Highlighting the need to study anti-populism together with populism, focusing on their mutual constitution from a discursive perspective, it articulates a brief yet comprehensive genealogy of populist and anti-populist actors (parties and media) in Greece, exploring their discursive strategies. Moving on, it identifies the main characteristics this antagonistic divide took on within the newly contested, crisis-ridden sociopolitical field, highlighting the implications for a contemporary understanding of cleavages, with potentially broader implications

]]>