Dimitris Dalakoglou, Georgios Agelopoulos, eds, <em>Critical times in Greece: Anthropological engagements with the crisis</em>, New York, Routledge, 2018, pp. 277
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3791
Recensione di Dimitris Dalakoglou, Georgios Agelopoulos, eds, Critical times in Greece: Anthropological engagements with the crisis, New York, Routledge, 2018, pp. 277.
application/pdf
2239-625X
3791
1
en
Stamatis Amarianakis
Anuac
Dimitris Dalakoglou, Georgios Agelopoulos, eds, <em>Critical times in Greece: Anthropological engagements with the crisis</em>, New York, Routledge, 2018, pp. 277
Text.Serial.Journal
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac
8
Book reviews
2019-07-31
2019-06-21
2019-07-31
2019-07-30
235-238
1
Stamatis Amarianakis
2019/07/31
10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3791
235
Universitat de Barcelona, Spain
2239-625X
1
en
238
Dimitris Dalakoglou, Georgios Agelopoulos, eds, <em>Critical times in Greece: Anthropological engagements with the crisis</em>, New York, Routledge, 2018, pp. 277
https://ojs.unica.it/index.php/anuac/article/download/3791/3369
8
                                        2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 1, GIUGNO 2019: 235-238




                                                                          RECENSIONI
Dimitris DALAKOGLOU, Georgios AGELOPOULOS (eds) | Critical times in Greece:
Anthropological engagements with the crisis, New York, Routledge, 2018, pp.
277.


   This edited volume consists of a wide array of ethnographic accounts of
the Greek society being in crisis. The book is divided in four sections, which
“examine transformations at the structural level, transformations as a praxis
and both together”. The common thread linking the papers is the
assumption that crisis is “a moment that both creates and reveals”.
   The first section – “The State” – focuses on crisis as a form of governance
and on the state’s transformations under the pressure of crisis and neoliberal
structural adjustments. Beyond the economic restructurings, Athena
Athanasiou shifts the attention to how crisis had produced neoliberal forms
of governmentality. Interestingly, she suggests that the neoliberalization of
the Greek State produced a resurgence of conservative ideals which she
names neo-conservativism. Dimitrios Gkintidis explores how the EU funds
shaped the moralities of the Greek-EU relations in times of crisis. His
research focuses on the Greek pro-austerity technocrats who stress the fact
that Greece, and Greek people as a whole, had benefited from the EU funds,
yet failed to make good use of them. As Gkintidis presents, they hardly ever
refer to specific developments, fail to acknowledge how those funds had
enhanced capitalist exploitation and accumulation by dispossession
processes while they homogenize “Greeks” in their discourses. Yannis
Kallianos suggests that in times of crisis the Greek State had been re-
engineered to facilitate neoliberal adjustments and re-establish its
legitimacy. Since the implementation of austerity, the legitimacy deficit of
the Greek State increased and as a result, the austerity governments in order
to manage the disorder facilitated fear and uncertainty to legitimize their
role. The witty point here is that – as Athanasiou mentions – neoliberal and


This work is licensed under the Creative Commons © Stamatis Amarianakis
2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 1, GIUGNO 2019: 235-238.
ISSN: 2239-625X – DOI: 10.7340/anuac2239-625X-3791
236                   DIMITRIS DALAKOGLOU, GEORGIOS AGELOPOULOS (EDS) | CRITICAL TIMES IN GREECE


conservative ideologies go hand in hand, as they have had in the past in
South America, Africa and Asia. The conservatism, inherent in the Greek
State’s structures, stands as a bedrock to counteract the destabilization and
the crises which the neoliberal restructurings have produced.
   The conservatism which had historically shaped the Greek Nation-State is
analysed by Tryfon Bampilis in the next section “The Nation”, where he
deals with the emergence of the Neo-Nazi party of the Golden Dawn and its
election to the Greek parliament in 2012. He aptly deconstructs the neo-nazi
ideology and exposes its internal contradictions along with a rich
ethnographic and historical account of the party’s activities that date back to
the 1980s. Instead of a rational explanation, he employs a cultural,
performative analysis to elaborate why and how Golden Dawn, out of a
sudden, had become appealing to the challenged populations of the Greek
crisis. Giorgos Tsimouris’s and Roland S. Moore’s chapter draws a parallel
between the Golden Dawn practices on attacking “immigrants of color” with
the numerous deaths in the Greek borders. They show that the Neo-Nazi
agenda was adopted by the Greek government of Samaras in an attempt to
attract the popular right wing voters, while this notion was backed up by the
EU and its policies towards the refugee crisis. David Sutton examines folk
narratives in the island of Kalymnos about hidden treasures which he
connects with the recent discoveries of oil and gas reserves in the Greek EEZ
(Exclusive Economic Zone). Finally, Sarah Green argues that the official
recognition of “immigrants” in Greece had appeared belatedly in 1990s,
when it was firstly coined as a legal status of a person who lived in Greece.
Until then, the category of “the migrant” was informed by the Greek
economic emigrants in the advanced economies of the West.
   In the next section – “Subjectivities” – Anna Apostolidou correlates the
economic depression of crisis with discourses about the mental and
emotional health of the Greeks and how pathologizing discourses are
interchangeably used to refer both to mental health and economic problems.
Neni Panourgiá follows the living arrangements of a 30 year old man in his
effort to make ends meet in the harsh reality of the recent austerity crisis.
She shows how austerity had rendered his whole existence vulnerable when
several misfortunes occurred. Andreas Chatzidakis examines how economic
scarcity has led to a certain failure of the consumption practices of
Athenians, producing ruptures in the way subjectivities, in the capitalist
society, are (re)produced. He compares these failed consumption practices
with anti-consumerist initiatives which had flourished in Athens during the
pre-crisis years. Eleni Papagaroufali focuses on the rally of young people to


2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 1, GIUGNO 2019: 235-238
DIMITRIS DALAKOGLOU, GEORGIOS AGELOPOULOS (EDS) | CRITICAL TIMES IN GREECE             237


fill in their CVs in order to have better chances of finding employment and
examines how the self is being (re)constructed by the linear structure of the
CV.
    The last section – “Confronting the Crisis” – deals with organized
grassroots initiatives tackling social alienation and proposing alternative
models of socio-economic action. Giorgos Poulimenakos and Dimitris
Dalakoglou examine the organization of K*Vox Squat in Exarcheia, Athens,
and how their members understand, project and situate their activities in the
wider social realities. The squat operates as a multifunctional oasis of
sociality, hosting various disalienating acts and events for socially excluded
and isolated people (both locals and immigrants) in the area. In the same
line, Katerina Rozakou follows groups who stand in solidarity with the
undocumented migrants under detention and about to be deported. These
groups, self-identified as “solidarians”, besides providing legal and material
support, help immigrants to socialize and feel acceptance as human beings.
Theodoros Rakopoulos examines solidarity through a different grassroots
initiative which had gained popularity during the first years of crisis. The
anti-middlemen movement created various groups all over Greece which
distributed goods by bypassing the formal market structures. By doing so
they attempted to bring people together and to socialize on the basis of an
alternative mode of distribution. Yet as he shows the cohesion of the group
was challenged with the possibility of formalization (and hence
normalization) into a cooperative and the option of offering paid labour
positions to their members. Lastly, Georgios Agelopoulos explores the
viewpoint of those who opposed the anti-middlemen movement, namely
police officers and middle-men. His paper is autoethnographic and discusses
the so called “potato movement” which laid the foundations of the nation
wide anti-middlemen movement that followed.
    The volume offers a rich ethnographic collection of papers with diverse
theoretical engagement that deal with a wide array of key issues which
enhance the understanding of the crisis experiences. However I cannot but
notice that there is a dis-appropriate number of papers which ground their
findings in Athens, and many of those in the areas around Exarcheia square,
Syntagma square and Omonoia square, hence producing a false,
romanticized image of Athens as a city that resists. I do believe however that
a bit of romanticism is always needed and it can be inspiring. I can
understand also that in Greece, which has no other big city, the minorities
(refugees, “solidarians”, anarchists, activists, LGTBQ persons) which this
book aims to express are hard to be found and in many instances are
invisible and much less organized in smaller cities where they can hardly

                                           2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 1, GIUGNO 2019: 235-238
238                   DIMITRIS DALAKOGLOU, GEORGIOS AGELOPOULOS (EDS) | CRITICAL TIMES IN GREECE


form a critical mass to voice their claims. Even Golden Dawn centres its
activities mostly in Athens, where it has in absolute numbers a stronger base
of active supporters and can easily hide in the anonymity the big city offers.
Lastly the book is far too focused on the migration/refugee crisis which does
not affect the Greek society as a whole but rather it is confined to specific
places and areas where migrants are “hosted”. The book finishes with an
afterword by Eythimios Papataxiarchis who suggests that we replace the
problematic term of “crisis” with “trouble”. He provides several arguments
to support his view, based on his own ethnographic work in the island of
Lesvos – which had been vastly affected by the current refugee crisis – and
the research presented in this edited book.


                                                                Stamatis AMARIANAKIS
                                                                Universitat de Barcelona
                                                                samarianakis@gmail.com




2019 | ANUAC. VOL. 8, N° 1, GIUGNO 2019: 235-238
