Wit and Greece’s economic crisis: Ironic slogans, food, and antiausterity sentiments

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:34 +0000

Ironic slogans voice opposition to neoliberal austerity measures as people in western Thessaly, Greece, strive to account for dramatically increasing poverty and cultivate a sense of collective suffering in an era of economic crisis. The slogans are pinned to moments of socioeconomic turmoil in recent Greek history, such as the 1941–43 famine and the 1973 polytechnic uprising against military dictatorship. Through satire, they capture local and national attitudes toward the government’s current austerity policy and neoliberalism more generally. Drawing on powerful tropes of food, the slogans critique the experiences of neoliberal reform, becoming sites of resistance and solidarity that reframe relations between local people, their government, and international creditors.

The social aesthetics of eligibility: NGO aid and indeterminacy in the Greek asylum process

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:16 +0000

On the porous EU border of Greece, where both fiscal and migration management are said to be in a state of crisis, NGOs figure crucially in the provision of legal and social aid to asylum applicants. I explore the dialogical engagements underpinning the determination of client eligibility at one such NGO in Athens. As workers and aid candidates coproduce “pictures” of lives eligible for protection, profound uncertainties and indeterminacies emerge. I argue that this indeterminacy gives testament to an often overlooked form of agency: how aid candidates and service providers alike reshape and even refuse dominant images of deservingness, victimhood, and vulnerability from within systems of aid distribution.

American Ethnologist – To Archeio

Wit and Greece’s economic crisis: Ironic slogans, food, and antiausterity sentiments

The social aesthetics of eligibility: NGO aid and indeterminacy in the Greek asylum process