Solidarity and Justice in Local Food Systems: The Transformative Potential of Producer-Consumer Networks in Greece (original) (raw)
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Sociology and Anthropology, 2016
Criticism against agro-industrial food systems and intense farming practices is increasing. Local food chains have emerged as a promising approach for transitions towards sustainable food systems (in terms of environment, socioeconomic equity and regional development) [1, 2]. The currently dire economic situation in Greece has 'stimulated' the emergence of alternative local food chains enabling the economic crisis to be understood within the context of resilience [3]. This paper aims to examine resilience as the ability of people, groups or communities to cope with external stresses and disturbances resulting from social, political and environmental change. A relatively new tendency could also be viewed as part of a wider revival of socially-motivated and solidarity based economic activities in the past decade. Local short food chains exist in a range of forms in both commercial and non-commercial settings. A comparison of different types of 'short' food networks is useful and will be presented. The methods employed will be based on a literature review, desktop research and information derived from an EU funded research project. Furthermore, key issues of the analysis will focus on activities, actors, type of products, area and territory, health and sustainability aspects, growth potential and innovation [cf. 4].
Solidarity bridges: Alternative food economies in urban Greece
2017
Set in the urban-rural continuum of Thessaloniki, this paper explores the grounded social activities of certain groups, committed to building a social economy of distributing food without intermediaries. In the light of new ethnographic data from grassroots responses to livelihoods’ hardship, I propose to expand reciprocity's conceptual boundaries, extended to include a local concept rampant in crisis-ridden Greece: solidarity. The solidarity economy can be seen as a conceptual and political bridge that symbolically as well as materially brings together communities of food production and consumption. The cosmology of the horio (village) is an unexpected urban activist metonym in the food distribution systems that have emerged amidst austerity measures in Greece
2018. Solidarity bridges: alternative food economies in urban Greece
Set in the urban-rural continuum of Thessaloniki, this paper explores the grounded social activities of certain groups, committed to building a social economy of distributing food without intermediaries. In the light of new ethnographic data from grassroots responses to livelihoods' hardship, I propose to expand reciprocity's conceptual boundaries, extended to include a local concept rampant in crisis-ridden Greece: solidarity. The solidarity economy can be seen as a conceptual and political bridge that symbolically as well as materially brings together communities of food production and consumption. The cosmology of the horio (village) is an unexpected urban activist metonym in the food distribution systems that have emerged amidst austerity measures in Greece.
Dealing with Undeniable Differences in Thessaloniki’s Solidarity Economy of Food
In the context of capitalist crisis, a re-emergence of reciprocal economic relationships has been praised by postcapitalist researchers. Self-organised solidarity food economies have indeed brought promise of democratic change. However, this article draws on two years of fieldwork in Thessaloniki to develop Iris Young's Politics of Difference in order to challenge the view of solidarity economy as wholly a process of collaboration. Thus, the article overturns prevalent myths regarding the cultural ineptitude of Greek actors. In doing so, it highlights the need for food movements to acknowledge the inevitable tensions that arise from structural inequalities. The article argues that overcoming these tensions requires challenging difference-blindness in grassroots democracy. It concludes that an acknowledgement of shifting structural inequalities, exaggerated by the economic crisis, must be incorporated into an initiative's democratic processes alongside mechanisms for dealing with disharmony.
“NEW” GREEK FOOD SOLIDARITIES (ALLILEGGIÍ) Communalism vis-à-vis Food in Crisis Greece
2018 - Special Issue: Practices of Resistance, 2018
When I first began to reflect on the work I had conducted for my Ph.D. dissertation between 2008 and 2010 1 in the southern Peloponnesian prefecture of Laconia (which was primarily about Greek/non-Greek farmer relationships [Verinis 2015]), I sought to account for some statistical evidence that many non-Greeks had left Greece since the onset of the financial crisis. 2 Mainstream media has focused heavily on the rise of support for the Greek far right, particularly the now infamous neofascist party Chryssí Avgí, or Golden Dawn, whose members have been responsible for all sorts of brutal and illegal acts against individuals they deem unworthy of Greek identity. This data and media focus has somewhat overshadowed interest in solidarity movements as well as the seemingly paradoxical evidence I had collected during my dissertation fieldwork-that many bonds between Greeks and non-Greeks in rural areas had strengthened since the early 1990s. 3 What is more, to say that economic migrants are not simply exploited by neoliberalism is generally anathema to anthropology, despite its interest in data niches visà-vis qualitative approaches such as my focus on a certain relatively small group of economic immigrants. Nonetheless, inspired by the unprecedented achievements and future visions of certain Albanians, Moldovans, Ukrainians, Romanians, Bulgarians as well as farmers of other South-Eastern/Eastern European/Balkan ethno-nationalities whom I have had experiences working with in Greece, I remained convinced that certain forms of co-ethnic In this paper I extend the anthropological analyses of "new" solidarity (allileggií) networks or movements in Greece to rural regions and agricultural life as well as new groups of people. Food networks such as the "potato movement", which facilitates the direct sales of agricultural produce, reveals rural aspects of networks that are thought to be simply urban phenomena. "Social kitchens" are revealed to be humanistic as well as nationalistic, bringing refugees, economic migrants, and Greeks together in arguably unprecedented ways. Through a review of such food solidarity movements-their rural or urban boundaries as well as their egalitarian or multicultural tenets-I consider whether they are thus more than mere extensions of earlier patterns of social solidarity identified in the anthropological record.
Responding to the crisis: food co-operatives and the solidarity economy in Greece
Anthropology Southern Africa, 2013
This article discusses a case of popular social response to imposed austerity and recession in Greece. It focuses on the antimiddleman movement in an Athens suburb. It also addresses the broader picture of the current Greek crisis, explaining how participants in this grassroots response extend their activity beyond food distribution, beginning to imagine modes of economic conduct and interaction different from those currently dominant in Greece. I explore their efforts to turn the food market they have established in Athens into a formal co-operative which links consumers in their neighbourhood directly to selected farmers through bonds of solidarity, and to work with others to create a network of similar co-operatives which will span the whole country. I argue that their endeavours strongly resemble the co-operativism and practical socialism advocated by important social theorists such as Mauss and Polanyi, and suggest that it may be important for the young activists in Athens to learn more about their ideas.
Alternative economies are commonly depicted as a product of the will of individuals or groups, or as a spontaneous and cumulative reaction to an impact, be it crisis or neoliberalism more generally. Their fate is to transform the world, either gradually or through the clash of models. On the other hand, critics usually see them as a product of neoliberalism, or even capitalism. They are condemned thus to co-optation and marginality, or they just embody neoliberal forms, practices, and subjectivities. In this thesis, I chart an alternative explanation for why and how alternative economies emerge and develop, as well as provide a different lens through which to understand their transformative potential. I investigate these questions by looking at alternative food economies in the post-2008 economic crisis. In order to gain a deep comprehension of real-life events embedded in context, I base my research on two case-studies: the case of new agroecological ‘peasants’ in the Basque Country (Spain), and that of ‘no-middlemen’ solidarity food distributions in Greece. Drawing on fieldwork research, on analytical tools derived from political ecology and food sovereignty literatures, and on Bensaïd’s and Gramsci’s insights on radical politics, this thesis deals with important conceptual and practical questions regarding resistance to neoliberalism, emancipatory strategies, and political agency. My main argument is that alternative food economies can be an integral part of activist strategies engaged in struggles over hegemony, which seek to produce critical and active subjects and, ultimately, move the subaltern to a position of leadership. In the Basque Country, denaturalizing hegemonic ideas and practices regarding agribusiness and normalizing peasant alternatives is a key focus of small farmers’ strategy of building alliances and a large social movement fighting for food sovereignty. In Greece, tackling farmers’ difficulties and food insecurity through ‘solidarity’ is a strategic step towards advancing counter-austerity ideas and practices to engage people in ‘practical-critical’ activity. Whereas alternative food economies may provide opportunities to politicize politics, create spaces of politicization and self-organization of the subaltern, and generate learning processes on how society-nature relations can be organized differently, they also face challenges, as they are not outside (because there is no outside to) capitalism. The difficulties faced by agroecological producers call us to pay more attention to the relation between working-time and free-time for politics in alternative models. Efforts to develop alternatives must focus on providing the subaltern with the material and subjective conditions that enable them to become ‘agents of their own history’. A politics that tackles social reproduction needs and builds a ‘politics of hope’ is therefore relevant. Indeed, environmental struggles may involve broader social and political goals, beyond concerns over access to resources and the environment or securing livelihoods; this shows the productive relationship between diverse struggles.
Agriculture, 2016
In industrialized nations, local food networks have generally been analyzed through alternative food systems, in spite of the fact that they are much more diverse than this would imply. In France, 'short food chains' are both a continuation of a long tradition and a recent trend which now extends beyond activists, to consumers and producers as well. This paper will explore the conditions under which these chains can change the practices and knowledge of ordinary actors in urban food systems, from producers to urban consumers and policy-makers, in the area of agriculture and sustainability. It will consider the case study of the creation and development of an urban open-air market which has been analyzed using intervention research with input from economic sociology. We will highlight how personal relations, which are encouraged by a participatory context, support the evolution of practices and knowledge. We will also illustrate how a system of produce labelling has emerged as a mediation resource, and has increased changes as well as participation within the re-territorialization of the urban food system. By describing a concrete expression of food democracy which is spreading in France via a free collective trademark, and by showing its role in the transition of 'ordinary' actors towards a more sustainable agriculture, this paper will shine new light onto local food chains as well as traditional short food chains, and will call for more research on the subject.
Dialectical Anthropology, 2014
Anthropological literature on crises and social and solidarity economies can benefit from integrated approaches that assess grassroots cooperatives formed during critical periods of capitalist recession. This article debates on why it is problematic to conceptualize the Greek crisis as exceptional and then examines the relationship between the solidarity economy and cooperatives and argues that the latter is a development of the former in the future plans of people struggling against the crisis being witnessed in Greece. It moreover makes a case for there being a need to pay more attention to the distribution sector. Its main aim is to point out how participants engaged in initiatives related to the solidarity economy tend to imagine that their activities are inspired by larger aims and claims than the immediate significance of their material actions. This is done by ethnographically analyzing organized social responses against crises through the rise of popular solidarity economies associated with distribution of food without middlemen.