https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:46 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/dismantled-spatial-fixes-in-the-aftermath-of-recession-capital-switching-and-labour-underutilization-in-the-greek-capital-metropolitan-region/ Mon, 04 May 2020 23:24:46 +0000 https://toarcheio.org/items/dismantled-spatial-fixes-in-the-aftermath-of-recession-capital-switching-and-labour-underutilization-in-the-greek-capital-metropolitan-region/ Continued]]> The article offers a fresh, empirically grounded look at the spatialities of crisis triggered employment forms––a largely overlooked issue in contemporary critical geography literature. Specifically, it discusses the interconnection between investment flows from manufacturing to the built environment (capital switching) and underemployment in urban metropolitan regions to substantiate its impact on emerging spatial fixities. The article, which is based on an empirical analysis informed by a radical political economy, investigates changing fixed capital formations in Greece over an extended period prior to and during the recession, from 1995 to 2012. It traces the evolution of part-time waged work in the capital metropolitan region of Attica (Athens) vis-à-vis the rest of the country’s regional labour markets, focusing on the polarized 2005–2012 period and the demise of the construction industry. The article highlights that ‘disrupted’ capital switching that occurred in Greece, closely associated with recalibrated sectoral priorities and institutional interventions, resulted in the uneven sprawling of underemployment. Our findings offer insight into how the dismantling of spatial fixes within core metropolitan regions of the southern European Union (and beyond) are connected to labour surplus and successive slumps in manufacturing and construction. The article closes by calling for new theorizations of contemporary urban regional unevenness and its spatiotemporal fixities, which account for the role of changes in labour turnover time.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/legitimation-crisis-and-the-greek-explosion/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:53 +0000 http://arc.local/items/legitimation-crisis-and-the-greek-explosion/ The political ‘explosion’ that took place in Greece was a symptom of a systemic and deep‐rooted legitimation crisis of the Greek state. This essay examines some of the causes of this crisis, how the political space in which this explosion occurred was produced, and possibilities for continued political antagonisms and struggles.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/neoliberalism-identification-process-and-the-dialectics-of-crisis/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:08 +0000 http://arc.local/items/neoliberalism-identification-process-and-the-dialectics-of-crisis/ Continued]]> In Athens, on 6 December 2008, a policeman shot 15‐year‐old Alexis Grigoropoulos in cold blood and killed him. After the killing, spontaneous protests began in the Greek capital and within days the insurrection had spread all over Greece. Radical actions took place even in the more remote and politically conservative areas. The Greek insurrection was not an isolated and temporary episode, nor an abstraction. This essay reflects on the revolt and endeavours to shed light on the context in which it broke out. It considers it as a result of the crisis of capital and neoliberal values and, at the same time, of our negation of capital and its state — the crisis of capital being produced by our struggles and refusal to identify ourselves with neoliberal norms and values. Considered dialectically, the crisis intensifies our struggles and reproduces the crisis of identification with capitalist bearings.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/remember-remember-the-6th-of-december-a-rebellion-or-the-constituting-moment-of-a-radical-morphoma/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:08 +0000 http://arc.local/items/remember-remember-the-6th-of-december-a-rebellion-or-the-constituting-moment-of-a-radical-morphoma/ Continued]]> This essay discusses two complementary dimensions of the December 2008 events in Greece: one, the obvious anger against the brutal capitalist order being established in the country; the other, the disincorporation of a sector of the working class from the body of passivity and apathy that characterizes the working and middle classes. It is argued that the riots could mark the beginning of a new cycle of class struggle, while they did mark the formation of a radical ‘morphoma’; a coming‐together of radicalized sectors of the working class. Violence during the events should be seen in the light of these two dimensions. The essay concludes by questioning the designation of the events as a rebellion by radical leftists.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/rebels-with-a-cause-the-december-2008-greek-youth-movement-as-the-condensation-of-deeper-social-and-political-contradictions/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:08 +0000 http://arc.local/items/rebels-with-a-cause-the-december-2008-greek-youth-movement-as-the-condensation-of-deeper-social-and-political-contradictions/ Continued]]> The events of December 2008 in Greece represent a turning point in social movements against neoliberalism and capitalist restructuring. They were the result of worsening employment prospects for young people, the aggressive restructuring of the educational system and concern about the effects of the current economic crisis. The originality of the movement lies in its unique scale, in the expression of a new unity of youth in struggle, in the demand for radical change and in its anti‐systemic character. It can be viewed as further evidence of the crisis of neoliberal hegemony and as a sign of growing hegemonic instability in European capitalist social formations. For this reason it poses both a theoretical and a political challenge.

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