https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Thu, 30 Apr 2020 16:24:23 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/fossilized-futures-topologies-and-topographies-of-crisis-experience-in-central-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:49 +0000 http://arc.local/items/fossilized-futures-topologies-and-topographies-of-crisis-experience-in-central-greece/ Continued]]> Drawing on ethnography from western Thessaly, this article reassesses notions of time and temporality in the Greek economic crisis. People experience the past as a folded assemblage of linearly distant and sometimes contradictory moments that help them make sense of a period of social change. Anthropologists should embrace the paradoxes of (poly)temporality and address the topological/topographical experience of time and history. During an era of severe uncertainty, in Greece temporality is discussed through material objects such as photovoltaic panels and fossils as people articulate their situation vis-à-vis the past, present, and future. Multiple moments of the past are woven together to explain the current crisis experience, provoking fear that times of hardship are returning or instilling hope that the turmoil can be overcome.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-green-economy-as-a-sustainable-alternative/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:49 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-green-economy-as-a-sustainable-alternative/ Continued]]> This article explores the green economy as a sustainable alternative to austerity in Greece. The author argues that the movement towards the green economy has been hijacked by multinational corporations taking advantage of an austerity‐era policy that encourages a repetition of the neoliberal model of privatization, short‐term accumulation, rentier agreements and resource extraction. This is contrary to views that cast ‘crisis’ as an incubator of economic strategies that may feed green ecological transformations of the economy leading, ultimately, to sustainable growth. Current configurations of advanced capitalist power enable and promote injurious ‘green grabbing’, in part by leveraging the fantasy of a green economy as a solution to the fiscal crisis. As an alternative to austerity, the green economy requires further uncoupling from neoliberal business opportunism to allow natural capital to be harnessed as an economic asset for a sustainable long‐term public good.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/ethnographies-of-austerity-temporality-crisis-and-affect-in-southern-europe/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:42 +0000 http://arc.local/items/ethnographies-of-austerity-temporality-crisis-and-affect-in-southern-europe/ https://toarcheio.org/items/opportunism-and-diversification-entrepreneurship-and-livelihood-strategies-in-uncertain-times/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:34 +0000 http://arc.local/items/opportunism-and-diversification-entrepreneurship-and-livelihood-strategies-in-uncertain-times/ Continued]]> As economic crisis deepens across Europe people are forced to find innovative strategies to accommodate circumstances of chronic uncertainty. Even with a second multi-billion euro bailout package secured for Greece, the prospects of a sustainable recovery in the near future look bleak. However, crisis has also created dynamic spaces for entrepreneurial opportunism and diversification resulting in social mobility, relocation, shifts in livelihood strategy and a burgeoning informal economy. Although economic systems are currently undergoing radical reassessment, social demands such as competitive consumption remain. Opportunities for investment in renewable energy programmes, especially photovoltaics, are also pervasive. By considering cases of business opportunism and livelihood diversification in relation to Max Weber’s concept of wertrational and notions of uncertainty, this article brings new perspectives to strategies of negotiating the worst economic crisis in living memory.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/sun-wind-and-the-rebirth-of-extractive-economies-renewable-energy-investment-and-metanarratives-of-crisis-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:31 +0000 http://arc.local/items/sun-wind-and-the-rebirth-of-extractive-economies-renewable-energy-investment-and-metanarratives-of-crisis-in-greece/ Continued]]> In the midst of economic crisis, the Greek state has taken the unprecedented step of opening many of the nation’s closed business sectors to international investors. Opportunities for multinational investment have been most prolific in the arena of renewable energy, where foreign prospecting in solar and wind energy is soaring. This article discusses two renewable energy initiatives: photovoltaic parks on agricultural land in Thessaly, central mainland Greece, and a planned wind farm development on the Aegean island of Chios. Among the people of Thessaly and Chios, the renewable energy initiatives are widely seen in terms of conquest and occupation akin to the Ottoman era and the Second World War. Harnessing natural resources is perceived to be a colonial programme of economic extraction associated with the global South as much as a sustainable energy initiative, heralding a return to a time of foreign occupation. This article examines the dialectical relationship emerging between narratives of renewable energy extraction and broader, long‐standing conceptions of Greek identity.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-greek-economic-crisis-as-trope/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:19 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-greek-economic-crisis-as-trope/ Continued]]> The Greek economic crisis resonates across Europe as synonymous with corruption, poor government, austerity, financial bailouts, civil unrest, and social turmoil. The search for accountability on the local level is entangled with competing rhetorics of persuasion, fear, and complex historical consciousness. Internationally, the Greek crisis is employed as a trope to call for collective mobilization and political change. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Trikala, central Greece, this article outlines how accountability for the Greek economic crisis is understood in local and international arenas. Trikala can be considered a microcosm for the study of the pan-European economic turmoil as the “Greek crisis“ is heralded as a warning on national stages throughout the continent.

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