Solidarity in Times of Crisis: Emergent Practices and Potential for Paradigmatic Change. Notes from Greece (original) (raw)
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EXPLORING SOCIAL AND SOLIDARITY ECONOMY (SSE) DURING THE GREEK ECONOMIC CRISIS
In the last decades, Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) has become an everyday practice for an increasing number of citizens, and the SSE sector has been constantly expanding. Particularly, during hard economic times, SSE has acted as a viable economic alternative and as a means to support vulnerable social groups, hit by the recession. However, SSE does not merely act as an emergency actor during harsh economic times, but also as a form of resistance to neoliberal dominance and as a tool of empowerment, transformation and social change. This paper, using quantitative data from the LIVEWHAT project, explores SSE organisations in Greece, as one of the European countries most severely affected during the recent global financial crisis. The results, which are indicative of the Greek SSE sector during the period under study, shed light on the role of the recession as one of the main triggers for the recent expansion of SSE organisations that are often less formally organised, and primarily act as coping mechanisms, which aim to meet the uncovered, urgent socioeconomic needs of citizens. The findings also demonstrate that the Greek SSE sector, under study, acts as an economic alternative, promoting collective action and new social movements.
Scholarly approaches to the Greek crisis usually centered on its political character, tackle it as “a state of exception” or emphasize its “exceptional” features. Departing from a discussion on the nature of the crisis, in this article I examine social reactions to “it,” focusing on grassroots economic activity. I undertake a case study of a “solidarity economy” movement and from there I explore the wider political repercussions of this activity that has appeared in contemporary Greece where grassroots social welfare projects are organized in order to address hardships in the actors’ livelihoods. In this way, I explore the meaning of solidarity, a term that has become ubiquitous in the public discourse of contemporary Greece. Through an ethnographic study of the activities of a movement that organizes anti-middleman food distributions in Greece, I argue that such activities not only tackle the immediate effects of the crisis but also pose a conscious, wider critique to austerity politics. Activists’ appeal to solidarity economies is informed by their aim to formulate more efficient distribution cooperatives in the future.
Resonance of Solidarity: Meanings of a Local Concept in Anti-austerity Greece
Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 2014
Scholarly approaches to the Greek crisis usually centered on its political character, tackle it as "a state of exception" or emphasize its "exceptional" features. Departing from a discussion on the nature of the crisis, in this article I examine social reactions to "it," focusing on grassroots economic activity. I undertake a case study of a "solidarity economy" movement and from there I explore the wider political repercussions of this activity that has appeared in contemporary Greece where grassroots social welfare projects are organized in order to address hardships in the actors' livelihoods. In this way, I explore the meaning of solidarity, a term that has become ubiquitous in the public discourse of contemporary Greece. Through an ethnographic study of the activities of a movement that organizes anti-middleman food distributions in Greece, I argue that such activities not only tackle the immediate effects of the crisis but also pose a conscious, wider critique to austerity politics. Activists' appeal to solidarity economies is informed by their aim to formulate more efficient distribution cooperatives in the future.
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