https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:05 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/heterotopian-space-and-the-utopics-of-ethical-and-green-consumption/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:05 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/heterotopian-space-and-the-utopics-of-ethical-and-green-consumption/ Continued]]> In this article, we illustrate how Exarcheia, an Athenian neighbourhood that is renowned for its capacity for revolt and anti-capitalist ethos, provides a rich site for utopian praxis, particularly in relation to a range of green and ethical marketplace behaviours. Arguing that space and place are essential to questions of ethics, ecology, and politics, we explore Exarcheia as a heterotopian space that fosters critique and experimentation, generating new ways of thinking and doing green/ethical behaviours. Drawing on data from a two-year ethnography, our findings not only challenge individualised and de-contextualised notions of the consumer, but also expose moralistic and post-political assumptions that often go unnoticed in ethical and green consumer research. We point to the need for a counter-strand in the literature that reviews instances that we recognise as ethical or green consumerism not in terms of identity projects or given ideas of ethics but rather with reference to the particularity of the spatial contexts in which they occur and their political implications.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/postcards-from-the-edge-of-europe-immigrant-landscapes-and-the-creation-of-greektopia-heterotopia-and-atopia-in-lesvos-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:50 +0000 http://arc.local/items/postcards-from-the-edge-of-europe-immigrant-landscapes-and-the-creation-of-greektopia-heterotopia-and-atopia-in-lesvos-greece/ Continued]]> The island of Lesvos is composed of landscapes that have been influenced since antiquity and has been used by its inhabitants for many centuries. Now, in the wake of the civil war in Syria, social unrest in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and harsh economic and civil strife in northern Africa, more and more nonindigenous people and cultures occupy the island. Social and intercultural relations between the indigenous Greeks and non-Greeks are marked by tension and conflict as they compete for access to the island’s limited resources during this time of fiscal crisis in Greece. This postcard from two sociologists documents the struggle for space, albeit temporary, on an island where the quest for public space has led to contested landscapes of refuge and the creation or maintenance of Greektopias, or zones of exclusion.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/youth-heterotopias-in-precarious-times-the-students-autonomous-collectivity/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:43 +0000 http://arc.local/items/youth-heterotopias-in-precarious-times-the-students-autonomous-collectivity/ Continued]]> Under the structural restraints of the current financial, social and political crisis, I examine the case of a collectivity of students in Greece as an alternative small-scale form of political and cultural action, and I explore its dynamics and limits. I claim that the ‘collectivity’ is a form of heterotopia, that is, a specific social and cultural space, which somehow reflects and at the same time distorts, unsettles or inverts other spaces. In particular, I seek to uncover the rituals, practices and mentalities produced by the participants of this youth cultural space, and to understand how new subjectivities and collectivities come into being. In this context, I discuss some of the relevant literature on youth political participation. Furthermore, I illustrate the debate about ‘autonomy’ and ‘hegemony’ within social and political theory today.

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