https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 20 Apr 2020 16:53:54 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/illuminating-austerity-lighting-poverty-as-an-agent-and-signifier-of-the-greek-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:52 +0000 http://arc.local/items/illuminating-austerity-lighting-poverty-as-an-agent-and-signifier-of-the-greek-crisis/ Continued]]> Light – whether natural or artificial – plays multiple roles in the home: both as a material enabler of everyday life and as a device for exercising a variety of social relations. The post-2008 Greek economic crisis has endangered those roles by limiting people’s ability to access or afford adequate energy services. This paper focuses on the enforced lack of illumination in the home, and the strategies and tactics undertaken by households to overcome this challenge. I connect illumination practices and discourses to the implementation of austerity, by arguing that the threat of darkness has become a tool for compelling vulnerable groups to pay their electricity bills. The evidence presented in the paper is based on two sets of interviews with 25 households (including a total of 55 adult members) living in and around Thessaloniki – Greece’s second largest city, and one that has suffered severe economic consequences as a result of the crisis. I have established that the under-consumption of light is one of the most pronounced expressions of energy poverty, and as such endangers the ability to participate in the customs that define membership of society. But the emergence of activist-led amateur electricians and the symbolic and material mobilization of light for political purposes have also created multiple opportunities for resistance.

]]> 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/antinomies-of-flexibilization-and-atypical-employment-in-mediterranean-europe-greek-italian-and-spanish-regions-during-the-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:41 +0000 http://arc.local/items/antinomies-of-flexibilization-and-atypical-employment-in-mediterranean-europe-greek-italian-and-spanish-regions-during-the-crisis/ Continued]]> Until recently, Mediterranean countries were called on by European Union officials to provide for a “less-rigid” regulatory framework, in order to enhance “flexicurity”. This paper critically examines post-2008 flexibilization trends by focusing on Spanish, Italian and Greek regions. Starting from a contextualization of atypical employment and security, it then moves in a twofold direction; firstly, it presents the Flexible Contractual Arrangements and Active Labour Market Policies composite indicators, calculated for the NUTS-II regions of 12 member states for 2008 and 2011. These indicators reveal the changing ranking, especially of the Greek regions, towards higher labour market flexibility and relatively low levels of employability security; secondly, it focuses on the changing forms of atypical labour in the six regions that host the capital and the most important port city of Greece, Italy and Spain, respectively, by offering data on the expansion of flexible arrangements therein. The uneven flexibilization trends found in the study regions are seen as an outcome of the interaction between the general devaluation trends, different backgrounds and regionally specific patterns of labour market adjustment, while employment is found to be neither “rigid” nor “flexicure”. The paper concludes with some remarks on the relation between post-2008 dismantling of local labour regimes, restructuring and flexicurity.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-spatialization-of-democratic-politics-insights-from-indignant-squares/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:41 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-spatialization-of-democratic-politics-insights-from-indignant-squares/ Continued]]> This article departs from accounts that either deify Indignant Squares as a model for 21st century political praxis or demonize them as apolitical/post-political crowd gatherings. By performing a closer ethnographic reading of the Indignants’ protests at Athens’ Syntagma Square, we depict the Indignant Squares as a consensual and deeply spatialized staging of dissent, which nevertheless harbours in its underbelly internally conflicting and often radically opposing political imaginaries. A closer reading of the organization, practice and discourses that evolved at Syntagma Square unearths the existence of not one, but two distinct Indignant Squares, both at Syntagma, each with its own topography (upper and lower square), and its own discursive and material practices. Although both squares staged dissent, they nevertheless generated different (opposing, even) political imaginaries. The ‘upper square’ often divulged nationalistic or xenophobic discourses; the ‘lower square’ centred around more organized efforts to stage inclusive politics of solidarity. The paper suggests that, rather than focusing on the homogenizing terms Indignants’ movement/Indignant Squares we should instead be trying to develop a more nuanced theoretical understanding and a more finely grained empirical analysis of the discursive and spatial choreographies of these events. This, we argue, would allow us to go beyond either celebrating them as new political imaginaries, or condemning them as expressions of a post-political era. Talking of ‘Indignant Squares’ in the plural helps one explore in more grounded ways both the limitations and the possibilities that these events offer for opening up (or closing down) democratic politics.

]]> 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.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-spatialization-of-democratic-politicsinsights-from-indignant-squares/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:26 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-spatialization-of-democratic-politicsinsights-from-indignant-squares/ Continued]]> This article departs from accounts that either deify Indignant Squares as a model for 21st century political praxis or demonize them as apolitical/post-political crowd gatherings. By performing a closer ethnographic reading of the Indignants’ protests at Athens’ Syntagma Square, we depict the Indignant Squares as a consensual and deeply spatialized staging of dissent, which nevertheless harbours in its underbelly internally conflicting and often radically opposing political imaginaries. A closer reading of the organization, practice and discourses that evolved at Syntagma Square unearths the existence of not one, but two distinct Indignant Squares, both at Syntagma, each with its own topography (upper and lower square), and its own discursive and material practices. Although both squares staged dissent, they nevertheless generated different (opposing, even) political imaginaries. The ‘upper square’ often divulged nationalistic or xenophobic discourses; the ‘lower square’ centred around more organized efforts to stage inclusive politics of solidarity. The paper suggests that, rather than focusing on the homogenizing terms Indignants’movement/Indignant Squares we should instead be trying to develop a more nuanced theoretical understanding and a more finely grained empirical analysis of the discursive and spatial choreographies of these events. This, we argue, would allow us to go beyond either celebrating them as new political imaginaries, or condemning them as expressions of a post-political era. Talking of ‘Indignant Squares’ in the plural helps one explore in more grounded ways both the limitations and the possibilities that these events offer for opening up (or closing down) democratic politics.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/athens-rising/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:17 +0000 http://arc.local/items/athens-rising/ https://toarcheio.org/items/new-facets-of-urban-segregation-in-southern-europe-gender-migration-and-social-class-change-in-athens/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:06 +0000 http://arc.local/items/new-facets-of-urban-segregation-in-southern-europe-gender-migration-and-social-class-change-in-athens/ Continued]]> This article explores how primary features of occupational restructuring, such as the feminization of employment and migration, and changes in patterns of residential mobility of Greek and migrant women since the 1990s have contributed to shaping new forms of sociospatial segregation in Athens.We examine changes in the occupational structure and in segregation indices from 1991 to 2001. Findings suggest that new gender and ethnic divisions in the occupational structure combine with residential
mobility and introduce strong tendencies towards spatial fragmentation. Intra-urban and migratory flows reflect diversified occupational trajectories among women and contribute to shaping the socioeconomic profile of the destination areas: (a) migrant domestic and unskilled service workers locate to central city and suburban areas; (b)Greek managers and professionals, move to ‘upper-class suburbs’; (c) small Greek entrepreneurs and independent workers sprawl to peri-urban areas; (d) salespersons and clerks move to inner suburban areas.

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