Indignados – To Archeio

The Indignados protests in the Spanish and Greek press: Moving beyond the ‘protest paradigm’?

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:50 +0000

The protests of the Indignados in Spain and their counterpart of Aganaktismeni in Greece have been the most vocal expression of civic discontent against the ways the Euro crisis has been handled by national governments and the Eurozone. This article studies how these protests have been covered in the mainstream press. Drawing upon the ‘protest paradigm’, which longstanding research has employed to describe the template and biased way protests have been traditionally covered, we have conducted content analysis of mainstream Spanish and Greek newspapers. We argue that the overall coverage moved beyond the protest paradigm. It adopted a more positive tone in reporting the protests, including the individual voices of the protesters and covering the performative aspects of the movement in positive terms. At the same time, however, the protests were overwhelmingly reported as a mere expression of resentment against the status quo rather than as offering valid political alternatives.

The indignant citizen: anti-austerity movements in southern Europe and the anti-oligarchic reclaiming of citizenship

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:48 +0000

This article discusses the change in political vision of anti-austerity movements in southern Europe in comparison with previous protest movements. It focuses on the emergence of a discourse of citizenship at the core of the new protest wave, as seen in frequent references to ‘citizens’, ‘citizenry’ and ‘citizenship’ in movement manifestos, and the resolutions and declarations of popular assemblies. I investigate the meaning and motivations of this ‘citizenism’ and how it reflects the change in economic conditions and popular perceptions in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. The analysis draws from movement documents, and in-depth interviews with 40 protest organisers and participants from the Indignados movement in Spain and the Aganaktismenoimovement in Greece. I argue that within these movements, the idea of citizenship has acted both as a source of popular identity interpellating a diverse set of demographics, and as a central demand, organising calls for greater popular participation in decision-making, freedom of expression and against corruption. Anti-austerity movements put forward an anti-oligarchic view of citizenship, which is different from the liberal, civic-republican and social democratic approaches, in its understanding of citizenship as the power of the dispersed ‘citizenry’ against the concentrated power of economic and political elites. This grassroots re-appropriation of citizenship highlights how anti-austerity movements in southern Europe have departed from the anti-statism of autonomous movements and have developed a more positive view of the state as a basis of social cohesion and a possible means of ‘people power’.

Direct democracy now!’: The Greek indignados and the present cycle of struggles

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:21 +0000

This article’s ambition is to critically analyse the resistance of the Greek people to the country’s custody under the Troika that has led to a severe financial and social crisis. Emphasis is given to the ‘Outraged’ of Syntagma Square and their daily protests during the summer of 2011; a movement that has remained underreported in relation to other similar phenomena, despite the huge number of participants, and the intensity of its clash with the state. In addition, besides the empirical investigation of the Greek case, the article argues that it is of particular importance to note the movement’s cultural resources, as well as the inner class and ideological divisions. Also, the study attempts to fit the case of Greece within the global capitalist crisis and the struggles that have arisen as a response.

The economic crisis seen from the everyday: Europe’s nouveau poor and the global affective implications of a ‘local’ debt crisis

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:13 +0000

The proliferating numbers of a new population of urban poor in the Western world—who I call here nouveau poor—is a phenomenon equally (if not more) significant as the emergence of the Indignados and Occupy movements, and calls for urgent attention from the part of critical urban studies. This phenomenon forces us to re-evaluate the analytical categories within which we study urban poverty (gender, age, ethnicity, marginality, etc.) and prompts us to focus on commonality, rather than difference, when it comes to collectively reclaiming the ‘right to the city’. Focusing on the political, social and affective consequences of the presence of nouveau poor on the streets of Athens, I argue that the shock waves that Greece’s nouveau poor send down Europe’s spine are partly due to the fact that Athens’ new ranks of beggars are not migrants, junkies, alcoholics or homeless; they do not fall in any of the familiar categories of the urban ‘other’ or ‘subaltern’. As they belonged, until very recently, to the mainstream aspiring middle classes, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to ‘other’ them, ignore them or dismiss them politically, or socially. The presence of Europe’s very own ranks of middle class-come-poor begs for a reconceptualisation of the link between urban theory and praxis.