https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Thu, 30 Apr 2020 14:14:44 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 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/being-there-at-the-front-line-of-the-european-refugee-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:43 +0000 http://arc.local/items/being-there-at-the-front-line-of-the-european-refugee-crisis/ Continued]]> In the course of 2015, Skala Sykamnias, a fishing village and tourist idyll on the northern coast of Lesbos, by accident of its geographical location, has turned into the informal gate into Europe for more than 200.000 refugees. In this article the author analyses the massive flows of people and things that transverse his fieldwork site from different directions: the great diversity of actors enacting what are often dissonant ideals and strategies, the several theatres of operation and reception ‘structures’, both frontline and back stage, and the debates that revolve around humanitarian action in the region. The local community is falling apart whilst to the incoming it represents the gateway to freedom. It is becoming a mini theatre of conflicts that echoes wider debates on the political future of Europe.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-hypocrisy-of-european-moralism-greece-and-the-politics-of-cultural-aggression/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:41 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-hypocrisy-of-european-moralism-greece-and-the-politics-of-cultural-aggression/ Continued]]> In the current debt crisis, Greeks often stand accused of irresponsible borrowing, corruption, and laziness. In this article, I argue that the patently unfair way in which these stereotypes have framed the ongoing tensions between Greece and the other European countries is deeply grounded in the dynamics of “crypto‐colonialism.” German fascination with ancient Greece has combined with the needs of British, French, and, later, American strategic interests to produce a toxic brew of humiliation and contempt for the Greek people of today. Yet Greece, by escaping from the aftermath of military dictatorship under the unexpectedly benign guidance of the elder Constantine Karamanlis, is now – in marked contrast to at least one other crypto‐colonial state – giving the unelected leadership of the European Union and other creditors a lesson in democratic self‐sufficiency. Resolution of the residual tensions will nevertheless only be possible when both sides agree to cease trading insulting stereotypes and admit the errors of a shared and embarrassing past – a process for which anthropological perspectives can offer significant support.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/crete-as-warriorhood-visual-explorations-of-social-imaginaries-in-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:13 +0000 http://arc.local/items/crete-as-warriorhood-visual-explorations-of-social-imaginaries-in-crisis/ Continued]]> This paper explores contemporary Greek political praxis and social imagination through the study of Crete’s position in engagements with the “crisis”. The essay employs the visual as an object and a method of analysis and examines a series of social spheres ranging from public protesting to televisual representation. The paper explores the cultural productivity of notions of native resistance in the current context as well as Cretan responses to the use of traditionalist idioms within the “crisis”.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/crisis-attack-impromptu-ethnography-in-the-greek-maelstom/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:09 +0000 http://arc.local/items/crisis-attack-impromptu-ethnography-in-the-greek-maelstom/ Continued]]> Assailed by mounting debt and increasing economic distress, Greece today is also the target of media representations that emphasize violence and disorder. Michael Herzfeld – who was mugged and tear‐gassed in Athens this past July – argues that these representations are misleading and indeed are part of the problem they seek to explain. The structural violence of an insistent barrage of negative media coverage as well as that of international financial pressures undermines a previously stable and relatively crime‐free country, encouraging new forms – including police and popular racism, physical violence at demonstrations, and acts of petty crime – of what had once been a largely codified and ritualized idiom of aggression. While many Greeks do feel that debts should be paid, increasing economic desperation fuels a different view, and one that can best be interpreted in light of the social values that anthropologists have long studied in Greece: that the country’s creditors are violating their own obligations toward Greece and thus deserve to face both default on the massive debt and the public hostility of the Greek people.

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