The Political Ecology of Austerity: An Analysis of Socio-environmental Conflict under Crisis in Greece [Capitalism, Nature and Socialism] (original) (raw)
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Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2016
The paper focuses on two largely understudied and interrelated aspects of the post-2008 economic crisis: how the politics of austerity influences the dynamics of environmental conflict, and how the environment is mobilized in subalterns' struggles against the normalization of austerity as the hegemonic response to crisis. We ground our analysis on two grassroots conflicts in Greece: the "nomiddlemen" solidarity food distribution networks (across Greece), and the movement against gold mining in Halkidiki (Northern Greece). Using a Gramscian political ecology framework, our analysis shows that by reciprocally combining anti-austerity politics and alternative ways of understanding and using "nature", both projects challenge the reproduction of uneven society-environment relations exacerbated by the neoliberal austerity agenda. Keywords: austerity, philosophy of praxis, socio-environmental conflicts 1. Introduction Defined by Harvey (2011, 85-86) as a class politics for re-engineering society and privately appropriating the commons, austerity has become the main response from the part of capital and state institutions to the post-2008 crisis of late neoliberalism. Despite a wealth of analysis suggesting that austerity measures accentuate rather than repair socioeconomic problems under conditions of crisis (e.g. Krugman 2009), policies of budgetary discipline "to reduce workers' salaries, rights and social benefits" (Douzinas 2013, 28) prevail. A growing body of academic literature has focused on examining the disastrous and uneven socioeconomic impacts of austerity (e.g.
2021
This chapter focuses on how the environment was mobilised in subaltern struggles against the normalisation of austerity and “neoliberal natures” during and after the 2008 economic crisis in Greece. We ground our analysis on three grassroots environmental movements that emerged as a response to austerity measures: the national “no-middlemen” solidarity food distribution network (2012-2015); the local anti-mining movement in Halkidiki, northern Greece (2011 onwards); and the national movement against new onshore and offshore hydrocarbon explorations (2015 onwards). Using a Gramscian political ecology framework, our analysis shows that by reciprocally combining anti-austerity politics and alternative ways of understanding and mobilizing “environmental” discourses, all three movements successfully challenged the reproduction of uneven society environment relations that had been exacerbated by the austerity agenda and the intensification of neoliberal practices in the country.
Decarbonized Futures Struggles Over Ecological Distribution in Greece
Capitalism Nature Socialism, 33:4, 75-94, 2022
The energy sector in Greece has been undergoing multiple processes of diversification, privatization and neoliberal restructuring, following EU imperatives for common energy market and metabolized by fast-track policies of the indebted state. Based on long ethnographic fieldwork in the main coal-mining region of Greece, this article discusses the energopolitics of austerity linking the state-backed logics of accumulation to the lived experience of energy producers and consumers. The expropriation of surrounding-the-mine villages, the growing transformation of public/ communal/private land into photovoltaic parks and the very directions of imagining the future fuel multiscalar social and moral struggles. These reveal not only the horizontal integration of nature into capital valorization, though– albeit reduced – coal production and the spectacular investment to renewable energy ventures, but also the vertical processes of subsumption, enabled by financial engineering and rent-extraction. The model of energy transition rests on an uneven regime of ecological distribution that shapes but also exploits growing intra-class conflicts, propelled by the very contradictory nature of public power companies within each historical capitalist moment.
Environmental Conflicts and Social Movements – Twelve case studies from Greece
Our main aim with this publication is to bring forward (to the public debates) these alternatives and struggles deriving from socio-environmental movements. We focus our research on mapping twelve (12) environmental justice related conflicts and movements in Greece both contemporary and “historical”. These conflicts vary in terms of scope, means of protest and mobilization, internal organisation, area of conflict (urban, semi-urban, rural), type or source of conflict, outcomes and impact. They also cover a variety of geographies, local histories and communities from Crete in the Southern Greece to Halkidiki in the Northern part, or from islands in the Aegean Sea (Chios) to mountainous areas in mainland (Epirus/West Macedonia).
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.
The Contentious Common Space in Greece: From the Neoliberal Austerity to the SYRIZA Left Government
RC21, 2015
While the last years the discussion on urban commons is becoming increasingly popular among activists and radical scholars there have been few attempts to think it together with the notion of crisis. Following autonomous Marxists analysis (de Angelis 2010; Caffentzis 2010; Hardt and Negri 2009), conceptualizing the commons involves three things at the same time: common pool resource, community and commoning. Commons don’t exist per se but they are making in times of social struggles and they are constituted through the social process of commoning. In this theoretical framework, I connect the spatial analysis of Lefebvre (1974): Perceived-Conceived-Lived Space, with the autonomous Marxists analysis, and I propose the concept of the Common Space. From this point of view, motions and reactions of capitalism can be understood as a response to the power of social commoning of commoners’ communities that produce the common space. Capitalism seeks to distort (de Angelis 2009) commons and enclose the common space in order to maintain the permanence of the so-called primitive accumulation and the (re)production of commodity and surplusvalue. Following this approach crisis can be understood as the critical time of circulation of capital vis-à-vis the circulation of social struggles for the control over the commons. To approve this thesis I examine and problematize the paradigm of urban commons and enclosures in Greece in the era of crisis. During the last years we are witnessing in Greece an unprecedented wave of new urban enclosures and at the same time there are emerging fruitful urban social struggles and a new common space. On the one hand in the era of crisis there are emerged several local neighborhoods assemblies, social centers, squats, communal gardens, social health centers, social kindergartens, cooperatives, social groceries, collective kitchens, and barter structures that constitute a common space in the perceived-conceived-lived urban space. On the other hand, austerity measures have as a result crucial implementations of material, immaterial and ideological urban enclosures. Nowadays a new left government promises to take steps against neoliberal austerity urban enclosures and promote democratic urban planning. The challenge is great; hence this paper monitors the contentious commons space from the neoliberal austerity to the SYRIZA left government. Closing, I argue that in the era of crisis commons are in the focal point of political, social and urban conflicts.
Social Movement Studies, 2019
This paper broadens and deepens the debates on the recent protests against austerity in Greece. The paper begins by investigating how the global crisis is understood, embodied and contested through the participatory forms of collective action and political organization in Greece. Secondly, it highlights transformations in the political behaviors and lived experiences of the subjects who participated in the recent and ongoing wave of antiausterity mobilizations in Greece. Finally, it emphasizes the '(re-) politicization of everyday life' through the commons, which is a process grounded in the establishment of novel and open spaces of solidarity and trans-local collective action within and beyond institutional and state solutions. Building on these considerations, it is argued that the recent forms of everyday collective action have played a crucial role in challenging the prevailing neoliberal crisis politics, while at the same time are raising key issues for progressive governments and other institutional agents.