where to go after the crisis? reflecting on citizens activism in greece

Where to go after the Crisis? Reflecting on citizens activism

in Greece

Georgios AgelopoulosUniversity of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

7th Konitsa Summer SchoolKonitsa 2012

Course on ‘The Political Anthropology of the Crisis’

List of Episodes• Episode 1: ‘How can we cum up with

a movement in our village?’• Episode 2: It all started at the local

bakeries…• Episode 3: Acropolis Now! • Episode 4: Who pays the ferryman? • A postscript about theory,

methodology and praxis

Episode 1: April 2007• Discussing politics with 8 leftists in

the town of Thermi, a 20,000 residents suburb of Thessaloniki.

Episode 1: The place and the people, the participants and their life

trajectories

Episode 1: the political contextJanuary 2007 – March 2007

• Student and staff members demonstrations against the change of Article 16 of the Greek Constitution (i.e. against the existence of private Universities in Greece)

• The ‘Thursdays rendez-vous’ in the street of Athens and Thessaloniki, the introduction of tear gas produced in Israel, the victory of the movement.

Episode 1

Episode 1

Episode 1http://

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9TsHwRuaj0&feature=related

(minutes 0 to 1) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0_1nCrJfuA&feature=related(minutes 0 to 2)

Episode 1 (finale)• No local movement was formed until November 2011.

• In between 2007 and 2011: The 2008 revolt took place. The conservatives lost power in the 2009 national elections, PASOK and the far right wing party of LAOS were the main winners. The PASOK government invited the ‘troika’ to Greece and imposed austerity. ‘Citizens committees’ had developed all around Greece, mainly coping with the newly imposed, at that time, property tax (see: Poll tax in the 1990s UK, Property tax currently in Ireland, etc). The 300 migrants strike took place. ‘Golden Down’ emerged publicly. The welfare state in general as well as its local infrastructure were rapidly in a process of demolition.

In between of episodes 1 and 2

This presentation discusses the multiple experiences of what we call ‘crisis’ and the attempts to overcome them in present day Greece. Instead of following a top-down understanding of the ‘crisis’ and its uses, we will focus on the emic defense mechanisms to it.

Episode 2: A morning at the bakery

Episode 2: The MOVEMENT occurred…

• … but we were not aware of it! (Nikiforos, Andreas and the poster. The 7

and 14 of November 2011 public meetings)• The formation of the ‘Committee’• The role of the local municipal authorities• “Who are you?”: Local elites and

professionals, lawyers, Vlachs, leftists (of all kinds), conservatives, local activists, faitfull Old Calendarists and others…

Episode 2

Episode 2

Episode 2

Episode 2: Instead of finale, one needs to provide some explanations…

In between of Episodes 2 and 3: Remember Marlon Brando?

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHjWDCX1Bdw&feature=related

( minutes1to 2)

Episode 3: Acropolis Now!

Episode 3 at the local level

• Urban vegetable gardens • Economies of scale at the family

level, migration, cohabitation, changes in the educational priorities of the youth,

• Failure of local patron – client networks

• Closing down of 25% of the shops of the local market

Episode 4: Who pays the ferryman?

• The Committee and its activities (organizing, informing, connecting, debating).

• The rest of the story in http://denplironothermis.wordpress.com/

Episode 4: Who pays the ferryman?

• The cost of the crisis and its class dimensions

• The activists and their class identity, cultural and social capital

• Gender, age, previous political and social activism

• Those who benefit and support the committee

Episode 4: Who pays the ferryman?

• The ferryman, the ‘Other World’and the journey.

• ‘I could not stand the TV news any more… something died inside me’

• ‘It’s here… where the new Greece is going to develop’

• New forms of social solidarity, new forms of social relations, new places (from the space to the place).

Postscript • Anna Karenina (p. 2) Theory of social

movements: ‘People will accept everything provided that everyone else accepts them’

• G. Orwell (p. 3) Research methodology: ‘We need endless efforts to see what is in front of our noise’.

Some ideas about the theory of social movements

• What to take into account when studying social movements: ‘In social movements research, it is beyond any doubt important to take into consideration the societal features that surround and penetrate the event. Economic and societal orders, dominant religious convictions, kinship relations and existing communication media, among others, will inevitably have an impact on the course of events with regard to the conflict at stake, and willdefinitely have a bearing on local perceptions and valuation of it’ (Salman and Assies, p. 207).

• The life trajectories of the activists: ‘in taking into account the life histories of the actors in social movements, we learn to avoid taking social movements as given aggregates once they ubiquitously perform, or as phenomena inevitably triggered off by adverse circumstances or the worsening of living condition , or… as launched by the mere injection of a discourse made available by third parties or by a charismatic leader (ibid. pp. 212-213).

Some more ideas…The disabilities of political scientists when explaining social

movements: the simplistic hypothesis that changes in power relations + accumulated frustration leads to anger and thus to insurrection.

The disability of emic approaches and the need to contextualize.

The ‘culture failure syndrome’: The disadvantaged ones wish institutions to work. Thus they use proper cultural narratives in favor of this attempt. It is only when they loose faith to existing power institutions that they took action to change them.

Some more ideas about the past, the present and the future

Building institutions implies a projection of the present into the future.

In Cracking Capitalism J. Holloway points out that every crack in the dominant power relations, every act of destroying structures, is in need

of establishing alternative modes of production. (Aristotle: zoe vs. bios)

Some ideas about methodology

• The danger of crisisology (essentialize the crisis)

• Anthropologists tell stories (in what ways?)

• Anthropological advocacy• Theory and action (keeping the one

in distance from the other does not work)

• Knowing vs. understanding

In need of discussion• Crisis: social transformation, not

transition• Crisis and the role of social sciences

in modernity• The anthropological privilege