https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:36 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/urban-planning-and-revolt-a-spatial-analysis-of-the-december-2008-uprising-in-athens/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:36 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/urban-planning-and-revolt-a-spatial-analysis-of-the-december-2008-uprising-in-athens/ https://toarcheio.org/items/the-right-to-the-city-in-athens-during-a-crisis-era-between-inversion-assimilation-and-going-beyond/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:34 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/the-right-to-the-city-in-athens-during-a-crisis-era-between-inversion-assimilation-and-going-beyond/ Continued]]> Ever since the book of Henri Lefebvre “The right to the city” was published in 1968 it served as a great inspiration for several scholars, researchers, academics and activists. Being the point of departure for various urban movements, it contributed to a wave of resistance and destabilization of sovereignty in many parts of the western world during the turbulent decades of the 60s and 70s. While it has become extremely popular or even fashionable, it often appears detached from its original meaning. Various forms of sovereignty used its revolutionary and innovative rhetoric in an attempt to grand radical contexts in their political agendas. Forty five years after the first publication of Lefebvre’s book, the Athenian metropolis, a city in the (epi)center of the crisis turmoil, is governed by a municipal authority party that goes under the name of “Right to the City”. The party adopted much of Lefebvre’s revolutionary rhetoric, such as “the city as oeuvre”, in order to form its political agenda and win the municipal elections of 2010 and 2014. Ever since, a political program is applied based on a rather distorted interpretation of “the right to the city”. In this chapter two approaches of “The right to the city” (‘TRTTC’ from now on) will be confronted. On the one hand the Lefebvrian notion of the 1960s and on the other hand Kaminis’ (the Athens mayoral candidate) appropriation of 2010 and 2014. The first approach is considered as an effort to introduce the Marxian thought in spatial thinking in order to contribute to the emerging emancipatory movements, and the second as a fine example of distortion of contexts in favor of gaining power and promoting neoliberal policies. In this direction, we unfold the political program of Kaminis and examine its applications versus its title and theoretical context. By examining urban policies and tactics that are applied under the cloak of “TRTTC” and form the everyday life in Athens we intend to demonstrate that divisions between form and content can often lead to the complete inversion of primal meanings. By lifting the veil of propaganda it becomes visible that the assimilation of radical contexts on behalf of municipal authority does not lead to emancipatory urban policies but aims to cover up sovereignty. Bringing to surface neo-interpretations of Lefebvre’s analysis, though, does not only enlighten the subversion of the original notions or highlight them as stolen contexts from sovereignty. In fact, not only is it a great opportunity to explore once again and rethink what Lefebvre was teaching and writing during the 60s but also a motive to question, think beyond and challenge it in the contemporary contexts of urban uprisings and revolts. Inspired by the work of several radical scholars like Harvey, de Souza or Pasquinelli we make an argument on the perspectives beyond the Lefebvrian notion and an attempt to approach Athens as an emerging rebel city. During the crisis years various struggles and acts of solidarity have been taking place in the city area, thus several spaces of resistance and commoning have emerged. In this regard, we deal with the transition from demanding the city to occupying the city as a contemporary space of resistance.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/urban-and-regional-social-movements/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:32 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/urban-and-regional-social-movements/ Continued]]> The multilingual and interdisciplinary book Urban and Regional Social Movements includes 21 texts that explore theoretical issues of movement processes or focus on examining movements which have been developed in Greece and internationally (Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, India, Italy, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Turkey). It is a book that aims at being constantly “under construction” and as a consequence “alive”, up-to-date and dynamic. Hence the blog https://aoratespoleis.wordpress.com/ was also created which will be regularly updated with new links, studies and news from various urban and regional movements around the world. The book argues that urban and regional movements are interrelated as the regional movements are directly associated with the resistance to the looting and/or destruction of the natural commons in the name of serving a dominant uneven urban lifestyle. Thus, there is a feedback between the practices of social movements related to regional planning issues or simply to the exploitation and management of natural resources with these of urban movements. During the last years the discussion on the urban and regional social movements has been enriched with the notion of the so-called Common Space as an interpretative approach to the recent protests, riots and uprisings shortly before and during the current global and local crisis. At the same time, the easier, faster and in a wider – often global – scale dissemination of the information about the burst and the demands of the movements, through the contemporary alternative networks of information and action, underlines the emergence of new forms of communication which will be most likely these of the movements of the 21st century. Finally, the new urban and regional movements in which this book is interested are autonomous, massive and creative. They put themselves beyond a mere denial and confrontation to get in a collective creation and in radical changes of the space and everyday life.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/uni-conflicts-in-spaces-of-crisis-critical-approaches-in-against-and-beyond-the-university/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:30 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/uni-conflicts-in-spaces-of-crisis-critical-approaches-in-against-and-beyond-the-university/ https://toarcheio.org/items/the-newcomers-right-to-the-common-space-the-case-of-athens-during-the-refugee-crisis/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:29 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/the-newcomers-right-to-the-common-space-the-case-of-athens-during-the-refugee-crisis/ https://toarcheio.org/items/the-ecumenical-right-to-the-city-urban-commons-and-intersectional-enclosures-in-athens-and-istanbul/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:29 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/the-ecumenical-right-to-the-city-urban-commons-and-intersectional-enclosures-in-athens-and-istanbul/ The collective volume is an outcome of the international conference ‘Contested Borderscapes. Transnational Geographies vis-à-vis Fortress Europe’ that took place in Mytilene (Lesvos), September 28 – October 1, 2017.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/contested-borderscapes-transnational-geographies-vis-a-vis-fortress-europe/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:28 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/contested-borderscapes-transnational-geographies-vis-a-vis-fortress-europe/ Continued]]> In 2016, Oxford English Dictionary declared “post-truth” the word of the year. In this Orwellian moment, the movement of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants across the increasingly militarised borders of Europe have instigated a socio-spatial debate about the limits of human rights, national sovereignties, continental values, precipitating and contributing to the ongoing condition of European crises. Although in the era of globalisation borders constitute porous passages for capital and commodities, at the same time they have hardened and ossified as “new enclosures” seeking to immobilise migrant and refugee populations. Fortress Europe emerges as a complex of new state control mechanisms, freshly erected border fences, newly built detention centres and improvised refugee camps; together, these technologies of migration management aim at the criminalisation, classification, stigmatisation, and biopolitical control of moving populations, fomented by xenophobic politics, and managed by humanitarian subcontractors. In this hostile climate, people on the move contest European border regimes, peripheries, and cityscapes by claiming spatial justice and political visibility while creating a nexus of emerging common spaces. They are joined by activists defending their right to movement, who are engaged in efforts to “welcome refugees” into a shrinking and contested public sphere, into alternative and self-organised social spaces, responding to the humanitarian crises wrought by militarism, violence, and structural adjustment with solidarity, stemming from a larger vision of sharing in each other’s struggles for survival and social transformation.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/refugee-tv-and-refugees-got-talent-projects-affective-and-decolonial-geographies-of-invisible-common-spaces/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:27 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/refugee-tv-and-refugees-got-talent-projects-affective-and-decolonial-geographies-of-invisible-common-spaces/ https://toarcheio.org/items/reimagining-a-transnational-right-to-the-city-no-border-actions-and-commoning-practices-in-thessaloniki/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:26 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/reimagining-a-transnational-right-to-the-city-no-border-actions-and-commoning-practices-in-thessaloniki/ Continued]]> Although there is extensive literature on State migration policies and NGO activities, there are few studies on the common struggles between refugees and local activists. This article aims to fill this research gap by focusing on the impact of the transnational No Border camp that took place in Thessaloniki in 2016. The border region of northern Greece, with its capital Thessaloniki, is at the heart of the so-called refugee crisis and it is marked by a large number of solidarity initiatives. After the sealing of the “Balkan corridor”, the Greek State relocated thousands of refugees into isolated and inappropriate camps on the outskirts of Thessaloniki. Numerous local and international initiatives, with the participation of refugees from the camps, self-organized a transnational No Border camp in the city center that challenged State policies. By claiming the right to the city, activists from all over Europe, together with refugees, built direct-democratic assemblies and organized a multitude of direct actions, demonstrations, and squats that marked the city’s social body with spatial disobedience and transnational commoning practices. Here, activism emerges as an important field of research and this article aims to contribute to activists’ literature on migration studies after 2015. The article is based on militant research and inspired by the Lefebvrian right to the city, the autonomy of migration, and common space approaches. The right to the city refers to the rights to freedom, socialization, and habitation, but also to the right to reinvent and change the city. It was recently enhanced by approaches on common spaces and the way these highlight the production of spaces based on solidarity, mutual help, common care, and direct democracy. The main findings of this study point to how the struggle of migrants when crossing physical and social borders inspires local solidarity movements for global networking and opens up new possibilities to reimagine and reinvent transnational common spaces.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/establishing-indifference-the-affective-logic-of-neoliberalism/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:54 +0000 http://arc.local/items/establishing-indifference-the-affective-logic-of-neoliberalism/