https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 20 Apr 2020 12:49:52 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/alternative-food-economies-and-transformative-politics-in-times-of-crisis-insights-from-the-basque-country-and-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:47 +0000 http://arc.local/items/alternative-food-economies-and-transformative-politics-in-times-of-crisis-insights-from-the-basque-country-and-greece/ Continued]]> Why and how do alternative economies emerge, how do they develop and what is their contribution, if any, to transformative politics? Alternative economies proliferate in the countries worse hit by economic crisis and austerity, such as Spain or Greece. Yet the existing literature is stuck in a counter‐productive division between celebration and critique. We move beyond this division applying philosopher Daniel Bensaïd’s understanding of politics to two alternative food economies, one in the Basque Country and one in Greece. We illuminate the activist strategies and specific conjunctures within which the two alternatives emerged and explain how they develop in the face of political‐economic barriers. Alternative economies, we conclude, can be transformational when they are inserted in activist strategies directed to extend conflict, social struggles and challenge the capital–state nexus.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-political-ecology-of-austerity-an-analysis-of-socio-environmental-conflict-under-crisis-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:47 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-political-ecology-of-austerity-an-analysis-of-socio-environmental-conflict-under-crisis-in-greece/ Continued]]> The paper focuses on two largely understudied and interrelated aspects of the post-2008 economic crisis: how the politics of austerity influences the dynamics of environmental conflict and how the environment is mobilized in subaltern struggles against the normalization of austerity as the hegemonic response to crisis. We ground our analysis on two grassroots conflicts in Greece: the “no-middlemen” solidarity food distribution networks (across Greece) and the movement against gold mining in Halkidiki (northern Greece). Using a Gramscian political ecology framework, our analysis shows that by reciprocally combining anti-austerity politics and alternative ways of understanding and using “nature,” both projects challenge the reproduction of uneven society–environment relations exacerbated by the neoliberal austerity agenda.

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