https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 20 Apr 2020 14:11:38 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/practices-of-solidarity-in-athens-reconfigurations-of-public-space-and-urban-citizenship/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:53 +0000 http://arc.local/items/practices-of-solidarity-in-athens-reconfigurations-of-public-space-and-urban-citizenship/ Continued]]> The multi-faceted crisis that has hit Greece and other (southern) European countries has had severe consequences on people’s everyday lives. In an attempt to cope with, but also resist, dramatic changes in lifestyles, incomes and welfare, several initiatives have sprung up all over the country at many different scales, with diverse targets, varying actors and outcomes. Many people have abandoned their privacy to participate in public actions of solidarity, in initiatives that often involve new or alternative uses of urban space. It seems that practices of solidarity and claims around material spaces are becoming an important ‘laboratory’ for shaping a different public sphere. Drawing from relevant examples in Athens, the paper aims to reflect on the ways in which such practices and claims arise and develop; how different types of rights and forms of doing politics are enacted in situations of crisis and deprivation; and finally how such practices reconfigure public space and shape notions of belonging, which ultimately (re)define urban citizenship.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/tracing-aspects-of-the-greek-crisis-in-athens-putting-women-in-the-picture-2/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:45 +0000 http://arc.local/items/tracing-aspects-of-the-greek-crisis-in-athens-putting-women-in-the-picture-2/ Continued]]> In the political fluidity of our times, the dismal economic situation in Greece is perhaps extreme but indicative of a deepening crisis in Europe, which is expanding, both geographically and socially. Contrary to the dominant rhetoric, austerity measures and pacts imposed on Greece, Portugal, Spain – and later Cyprus – do not seem to provide effective remedies. On the contrary, they seem to plunge entire areas and groups of people into a vicious cycle of rising unemployment, shrinking incomes and deep impoverishment. In the context of this rhetoric, an almost exclusive emphasis on the macro-economic aspects of the crisis, seems to “expel” from public debate the fact that there are effects of austerity policies that are unevenly distributed, inscribed as they are on existing inequalities: inequalities among places, between women and men, locals and migrants, big and small employers, secure and precarious workers and, most importantly, intersections of these. This paper engages with some of the less debated aspects of the crisis in Athens, with a focus on the complex and usually invisible ways in which it impacts on women. It draws upon research in a low-income neighbourhood of Athens and focuses on changes in women’s everyday lives, which have to do with job precarity and job loss, destruction of social services and the re-shaping of care, as well as practices of coping with/resisting the crisis.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/practices-of-collective-action-and-solidarity-reconfigurations-of-the-public-space-in-crisis-ridden-athens-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:45 +0000 http://arc.local/items/practices-of-collective-action-and-solidarity-reconfigurations-of-the-public-space-in-crisis-ridden-athens-greece/ Continued]]> The multifaceted crisis that has hit Greece in the past years has had severe consequences on people’s everyday lives. In an attempt to cope with, and also resist dramatic changes in lifestyles, incomes and welfare, several initiatives have sprung up all over the country at many different scales, with diverse targets, varying actors and outcomes. Many people have abandoned their privacy to participate in public actions of solidarity, in initiatives that often involve new or alternative uses of urban space. It seems that practices of solidarity and claims around material spaces are becoming an important “laboratory” for shaping a different public sphere. The paper aimed to reflect on the ways in which such practices and claims arise and develop; how different types of rights and forms of doing politics are enacted in situations of crisis and deprivation; and finally how such practices reconfigure public space. We draw from relevant examples of initiatives in Athens, in order to discuss acts of coping and resistance and to reflect on the extent to which the concept of social innovation may provide fruitful insights into our discussion.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/is-the-crisis-in-athens-also-gendered-facets-of-access-and-invisibility-in-everyday-public-spaces/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:30 +0000 http://arc.local/items/is-the-crisis-in-athens-also-gendered-facets-of-access-and-invisibility-in-everyday-public-spaces/ Continued]]> As the Greek crisis deepens and ‘recovery’ is constantly postponed to an unknown future, a dominant discourse seems to consolidate which focuses almost exclusively on macro-economic arguments and concerns. Other aspects of the crisis, among which are its gendered facets and unequal effects on women and men, rarely permeate the allegedly ‘central’ understandings. With the possible exception of unemployment which fares high among left-wing analysts, gender is thought to pertain to a ‘special’, that is, less important, matter which may detract from the ‘main problem’. The paper draws together a series of stories of ordinary women who have experienced deep changes in their everyday lives as a result of austerity policies (unemployment, precarity, salary and pension cuts, shrinking social rights, mounting everyday violence). It argues that emphasis on this scale ‘closest in’, linked in multiple ways to many other scales (local, national, European, international), reveals areas of knowledge that would otherwise remain in the dark; and that connecting concrete bodies with global processes enriches our understandings with more complex and more flexible variables and informs the ‘big pictures’ (in this case about the Greek crisis)—and not only the reverse.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/tracing-aspects-of-the-greek-crisis-in-athens-putting-women-in-the-picture/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:30 +0000 http://arc.local/items/tracing-aspects-of-the-greek-crisis-in-athens-putting-women-in-the-picture/ Continued]]> In the political fluidity of our times, the dismal economic situation in Greece is perhaps extreme but indicative of a deepening crisis in Europe, which is expanding, both geographically and socially. Contrary to the dominant rhetoric, austerity measures and pacts imposed on Greece, Portugal, Spain – and later Cyprus – do not seem to provide effective remedies. On the contrary, they seem to plunge entire areas and groups of people into a vicious cycle of rising unemployment, shrinking incomes and deep impoverishment. In the context of this rhetoric, an almost exclusive emphasis on the macro-economic aspects of the crisis, seems to “expel” from public debate the fact that there are effects of austerity policies that are unevenly distributed, inscribed as they are on existing inequalities: inequalities among places, between women and men, locals and migrants, big and small employers, secure and precarious workers and, most importantly, intersections of these. This paper engages with some of the less debated aspects of the crisis in Athens, with a focus on the complex and usually invisible ways in which it impacts on women. It draws upon research in a low-income neighbourhood of Athens and focuses on changes in women’s everyday lives, which have to do with job precarity and job loss, destruction of social services and the re-shaping of care, as well as practices of coping with/resisting the crisis.

]]>