https://toarcheio.org To Archeio project site Mon, 20 Apr 2020 16:55:57 +0000 en-GB hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=5.4.1 https://toarcheio.org/items/the-indignant-citizen-anti-austerity-movements-in-southern-europe-and-the-anti-oligarchic-reclaiming-of-citizenship/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:48 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-indignant-citizen-anti-austerity-movements-in-southern-europe-and-the-anti-oligarchic-reclaiming-of-citizenship/ Continued]]> This article discusses the change in political vision of anti-austerity movements in southern Europe in comparison with previous protest movements. It focuses on the emergence of a discourse of citizenship at the core of the new protest wave, as seen in frequent references to ‘citizens’, ‘citizenry’ and ‘citizenship’ in movement manifestos, and the resolutions and declarations of popular assemblies. I investigate the meaning and motivations of this ‘citizenism’ and how it reflects the change in economic conditions and popular perceptions in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis. The analysis draws from movement documents, and in-depth interviews with 40 protest organisers and participants from the Indignados movement in Spain and the Aganaktismenoimovement in Greece. I argue that within these movements, the idea of citizenship has acted both as a source of popular identity interpellating a diverse set of demographics, and as a central demand, organising calls for greater popular participation in decision-making, freedom of expression and against corruption. Anti-austerity movements put forward an anti-oligarchic view of citizenship, which is different from the liberal, civic-republican and social democratic approaches, in its understanding of citizenship as the power of the dispersed ‘citizenry’ against the concentrated power of economic and political elites. This grassroots re-appropriation of citizenship highlights how anti-austerity movements in southern Europe have departed from the anti-statism of autonomous movements and have developed a more positive view of the state as a basis of social cohesion and a possible means of ‘people power’.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/reacting-to-austerity-politics-the-tactic-of-collective-expropriation-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:21 +0000 http://arc.local/items/reacting-to-austerity-politics-the-tactic-of-collective-expropriation-in-greece/ Continued]]> Masked activists, self-identifying as anarchists, taking from supermarkets and handing goods to passers-by are the topic of this profile. Over 50 such acts have occurred across Greece since the onset of the financial, political and social crisis in 2008. We present a snapshot of the phenomenon of collective expropriation and position it within a context of further market-oriented forms of resistance to ‘austerity politics’.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-protest-cycle-of-spring-2010-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:11 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-protest-cycle-of-spring-2010-in-greece/ Continued]]> The spring 2010 mass demonstrations in Greece, against the austerity plans imposed by the national government, point to certain new features of collective action for trade-union mobilizations. Here, we profile the conditions and the content of these mobilizations, and analyse the latter, aiming to show that they are forms of social protest which Tarrow calls a ‘mobilization phase of a cycle of contention’. We argue that these forms have enabled social movement actors to overcome – even temporarily – the historically rooted basic weaknesses of organization, collaboration and co-ordination in the Greek trade-union movement.

]]> https://toarcheio.org/items/the-december-2008-riots-in-greece/ Tue, 16 Apr 2019 22:25:06 +0000 http://arc.local/items/the-december-2008-riots-in-greece/ Continued]]> This paper offers a short overview of the civil unrest that marked December 2008 in Greece. It starts with a short detection exercise on the causes of the rioting and culminates in a more inclusive ascription of cause. It then deals with some recurring characteristics of youth protest politics in Greece by singling out and focusing on three interrelated nodal points: the legacy of Athens Polytechnic, school pupils’ mobilizations, and the anarchist movement. This way, a memetic explanation is advanced. The paper concludes by suggesting that our understanding of similar episodes, which are very likely to take in different national settings globally in light of the global economic crisis, has very much to gain by an appraisal of nation-specific legacies of popular resistance.

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