Tsilimpounidi, M. – To Archeio https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Thu, 30 Apr 2020 16:10:47 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 The ‘Refugee Crisis’ from Athens to Lesvos and Back: A Dialogical Account. https://toarcheio.org/items/the-refugee-crisis-from-athensto-lesvos-and-back-a-dialogical-account/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:53 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-refugee-crisis-from-athensto-lesvos-and-back-a-dialogical-account/ Continued]]> Our grandparents, refugees Our parents, immigrants We, racists? 1 The slogan that prefaces the paper provides the theoretical caveat for the tensions, limitations, and contradictions of academic discourses in conjuring the daily realities of the era of the ‘refugee crisis’ in Greece. This paper has the form of a dialogue between a sociologist and photographer (Myrto) and a political theorist and activist (Anna) who investigate different forms of the ways the ‘refugee crisis’ is changing the socio-political landscapes in Greece. The multiple aspects of our identities provide valuable tools with which we unpack the multiple and contradictory narratives of researching, learning, and disseminating in the current milieu. In particular, we are interested in the ways we shape knowledge and the tension between the episte-mological and the ontological ways of knowing. In other words, by moving from theory to praxis and back, we are attempting to reconcile the problem of knowing and the problem of being part of a specific crisis milieu. For example, how can we use crisis as a research methodology? What can we learn from the ongoing ‘refugee crisis’ in relation to issues of citizenship, belonging, and the future of the European project? Furthermore, the paper attempts to transcend discursive borders between social sciences and the humanities by analysing the deeply performative, situated and embodied practices of doing research in moments of crisis. For example, how to navigate multiple, and at times contradictory, aspects of one’s identity without returning to outmoded discourses of positivism and objectivity?

]]> Sociology of crisis: Visualising urban austerity https://toarcheio.org/items/sociology-of-crisis-visualising-urban-austerity/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:45 +0000 http://arc.local/items/sociology-of-crisis-visualising-urban-austerity/ Continued]]> The global financial crisis has demonstrated the impact and implications of late capitalism and its bedfellow, globalisation. In the European context, crisis is seen as a threat to the stability of the region, rather than a local or national concern. Post-2008, crisis is social and political, rather than merely financial, as Western countries witness the consequences of consumption, growth and profit.

In this book, Tsilimpounidi demonstrates how sociologists must develop new approaches to examining rapid shifts in the social landscape, since crisis is not merely reflected in balance sheets, but is mediated through spectacular imagery of loss, deprivation and increased vectors of marginalisation. Providing focused and valuable insight into the pressing problems of those living in Greece in relation to the wider spheres of the nation and at the level of the European Union, Sociology of Crisis takes an approach that is firmly located within a critical sociological appeal to reflexivity.

A timely engagement with the problem of crisis at a macro-level and in dialogue with the everyday experiences of crisis on a micro-level, this interdisciplinary title will appeal to both undergraduate and postgraduate students interested in sociology, social policy, geography, urban studies and research methods (social science).

]]> Late Extra! Merry Crisis-mas (from Greece) https://toarcheio.org/items/late-extra-merry-crisis-mas-from-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:15 +0000 http://arc.local/items/late-extra-merry-crisis-mas-from-greece/ Athens 2012: performances ‘in crisis’ or what happens when a city goes soft? https://toarcheio.org/items/athens-2012-performances-in-crisis-or-what-happens-when-a-city-goes-soft/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:15 +0000 http://arc.local/items/athens-2012-performances-in-crisis-or-what-happens-when-a-city-goes-soft/ Continued]]> Resistant performances in Athens have gathered momentum over the last year, transforming the fixed landscape of a city into a platform for negotiation and dialogue. The singular compelling imagery of ‘occupying’ as a form of resistance is its multiplicity of voices—the collective mobilisation of the ‘multitude’. Yet, the force and urgency of a collective resistance lies in the individual untold stories of its proponents. Rather than glorify the movement as a faceless entity, this paper embraces the daily stories, struggles and wounds of occupation, by using photographs. Resistant performances are connected with existing social conditions: austerity measures, mass immigration and ‘crisis’. Such narratives of globalisation and empire building are transforming central areas and traditional notions of Athenian identity, giving birth to a new street-level language that has twisted, innovated and filled in the gaps of a culture’s hegemonic discourse. The paper analyses both protests and specific examples of street art as visual markers of the shifting, complex discourses of power struggles, marginality and counter-cultures that establish a new reality that must be seen and heard.

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