Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies – To Archeio

From junta to crisis: Modernization, consumerism and cultural dualisms in Greece

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:53 +0000

The Greek economic crisis has triggered a self-reflexive process and prompted a re-examination of political and cultural trends in Greece since 1974 in an attempt to rethink earlier cultural approaches and practices. This article argues that a cultural perspective on the crisis can be productive insofar as it revisits key concepts and dominant models of analysis and charts cultural change in Greece from the fall of the military junta in 1974 to the beginning of the crisis in 2009. Just as the fall of the junta encouraged a re-examination of the post-civil-war period, so the current economic crisis has prompted a rethink of the metapolitefsi era. Exploring the cultural developments that have taken place during this period, this article focuses on competing notions of culture and engages with the two dreams of the post-junta period: modernization and consumerism. The aim is not to reaffirm oppositions or reverse hierarchies but to rethink cultural dualisms and explore hybrid tensions within a broader political and cultural context.

The debt crisis and Greece’s changing political discourse

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:44 +0000

The debt crisis in Greece since 2010 has triggered seismic changes in the political attitudes of the society and, above all, the political identity and discourse of the country. The extremely unpopular austerity policies caused a severe internal polarization which quickly translated into anti-German mass hysteria, vitriolic anti-EU rhetoric and sharp anti-austerity populism. This paper will endeavour to identify the origins, course and outcome of this dramatic shift in the political attitudes and identity in Greece and analyse them with the benefit of hindsight – almost six years after the eruption of the crisis.

Reinventing paradise: The Greek Crisis and contemporary British travel narratives

apostolos — Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:38 +0000

In the second half of the twentieth century Greece became a subject for travel writers in search of a European ‘Paradise’. But ‘Hell was also to be found in Greece, often in the form of frustrations over allegedly ‘non-European’ standards of living, facilities, and attitudes. A sample of travel narratives published between 2006 and 2014 suggests the extent to which, in the light of the ‘Greek Crisis’, twenty-first-century writers are abandoning these formerly conventional themes. There is now the potential for the realignment of narratives, with Greece becoming the Hell, rather than the Heaven, of Europe.