protest – To Archeio

Why Greeks rebel: Re-examining conventional and radical political action

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

Recent years have witnessed a rise of contentious political activity across the world heralding what some perceive as a new major cycle of protest. Much attention has focused on Europe, where the economic crisis generated considerable social unrest deemed comparable to earlier waves of protest. This article seeks to examine the basic constituents of the social forces unleashed by this economic crisis and to assess the main motivations driving this new cycle of protest. It distinguishes between conventional and radical political activity and seeks to identify the main correlates of each. The article uses an original telephone survey designed, piloted, and conducted in Greece (n = 5025) to construct a 12-item conventionalism scale and a 10-item radicalism scale. Using psychometric techniques, it assesses the effects of various independent variables on the two modes of political action. The article finds that, even in this economic crisis-hit setting, economic deprivation has a minimal effect on the two modes of behavior. Ideology, especially on the left of the political spectrum, has the strongest effect on both radical and conventional political action. Despite the major changes in the political context brought about by the economic crisis, political action displays significant continuity with the past.

‘Welcome to the civilization of fear’: on political graffiti heterotopias in Greece in times of crisis

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:38 +0000

Drawing upon ethnographical research carried out in Greek cities, this article discusses the use of political graffiti as a creative, playful response to the economic depression, social upheavals and precariousness surrounding the writers and as an act of civil disobedience and political protest in the context of the Greek economic crisis. The graffiti creation releases a flood of cultural responses to the crisis and gives an insight into the lived experience endured by the Greek people faced with the gloomy conditions of a society in crisis. The analysis traces the ways in which activists and unaligned writers turn their attention to the creative and expressive potential of graffiti and articulate cultural heterotopias on the visual landscape of Greek cities. Spatial politics allow distinctive political voices to transform the material dimensions of urban life in meaningful visual expression. The act of doing graffiti in the dystopia of crisis shows the desire of grassroots artists and cultural activists to use their creative capacities to overcome the unfavourable material conditions of their existence and to build alternative counter-hegemonic spaces of representation in the urban landscapes, challenging austerity policies and the existing social order.

Using Twitter to mobilize protest action: online mobilization patterns and action repertoires in the Occupy Wall Street, Indignados, and Aganaktismenoi movements,

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:37 +0000

The extensive use of social media for protest purposes was a distinctive feature of the recent protest events in Spain, Greece, and the United States. Like the Occupy Wall Street protesters in the United States, the indignant activists of Spain and Greece protested against unjust, unequal, and corrupt political and economic institutions marked by the arrogance of those in power. Social media can potentially change or contribute to the political communication, mobilization, and organization of social movements. To what extent did these three movements use social media in such ways? To answer this question a comparative content analysis of tweets sent during the heydays of each of the campaigns is conducted. The results indicate that, although Twitter was used significantly for political discussion and to communicate protest information, calls for participation were not predominant. Only a very small minority of tweets referred to protest organization and coordination issues. Furthermore, comparing the actual content of the Twitter information exchanges reveals similarities as well as differences among the three movements, which can be explained by the different national contexts.

Civil Compliance and “Political Luddism”: Explaining Variance in Social Unrest During Crisis in Ireland and Greece

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:29 +0000

When badly hit by the same global financial and economic crisis in the early 2000s, the Irish and the Greek societies reacted in quite different ways. Whereas Ireland remained largely acquiescent and displayed a high degree of civil compliance, Greeks took massively to the streets using violence and attacking specifically the state and the state personnel, a phenomenon we refer to as “political Luddism.” It is shown that the two countries are quite similar in terms of their economic condition, cultural background, social composition, ideological profiling, and party system dynamics, among other factors. What, then, explains the two countries’ dissimilar reactions to crisis? Through a detailed analysis of the cases, the article offers evidence that the most compelling explanation relates to the varying ability of the Greek and Irish states to continue providing basic public goods and other state-related services to their respective societies.

The Crisis before ‘The Crisis’: Violence and Urban Neoliberalization in Athens

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

The “Greek crisis” was officially inaugurated on May 2010 with the loan the Greek government took from the IMF-European Union-European Central Bank troika, the largest a country had ever taken (€110 bn). Since then, the social implications of this crisis have been dramatic. The form and the scale of social phenomena observed today in Greece and particularly in Athens–e.g., extreme poverty and inequality, profound police violence, organized racist violence–are unprecedented for the country. Nevertheless, a diachronic examination of some socio-spatial aspects of Athens reveals that the social character of the current crisis has been taking shape for some time. This article aims shed light on the social shape of the crisis by outlining three such socio-spatial dimensions as they materialized in the case of Athens during 1990s and 2000s: first, the emergence of new forms of social exclusion and inequality; second, the vast project of urban (re)development and the new spatialities it produced, and third the emergence of novel forms of political and xenophobic violence.

Beyond spontaneity: crisis, violence and collective action in Athens

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:12 +0000

This article argues for the analytical potentials of the concept of spontaneity in our effort to understand critically the socio-spatial dynamics of Athens, but especially the contemporary collective protest actions in the city. Such critical understanding emerges as a significant task given the current urgency to grasp the capitalist crisis and the collective reactions to it. However, taking into account the re-configuration of extreme-Right violence in the streets of Athens, the article attempts to revisit the Marxist dichotomy between spontaneity and non-spontaneity. Via an anthropological critique of this distinction, the paper suggests an additional point of focus beyond spontaneity.