Practices of solidarity in Athens: reconfigurations of public space and urban citizenship

Abstract

The multi-faceted crisis that has hit Greece and other (southern) European countries has had severe consequences on people’s everyday lives. In an attempt to cope with, but also resist, dramatic changes in lifestyles, incomes and welfare, several initiatives have sprung up all over the country at many different scales, with diverse targets, varying actors and outcomes. Many people have abandoned their privacy to participate in public actions of solidarity, in initiatives that often involve new or alternative uses of urban space. It seems that practices of solidarity and claims around material spaces are becoming an important ‘laboratory’ for shaping a different public sphere. Drawing from relevant examples in Athens, the paper aims to reflect on the ways in which such practices and claims arise and develop; how different types of rights and forms of doing politics are enacted in situations of crisis and deprivation; and finally how such practices reconfigure public space and shape notions of belonging, which ultimately (re)define urban citizenship.

Keywords:

• Collective action
• crisis
• public space
• solidarity initiatives
• exclusions

Notes

1. We use the term ‘solidarity initiatives’ to underline the grassroots and voluntary character of what we are studying and differentiate them form relevant structures and NGOs, funded privately, by municipal or state programs or by the church, which are active in poverty relief.

2. The programme for Humanitarian Aid of the Ministry of Labour, implemented by the new government since June 2015, has received more than 300,000 applications from households for food support and more than 120,000 applications for re-connection to the electricity network.

3. The on-going refugee crisis, with thousands of war refugees and migrants entering the EU through Greece, is yet another aspect of the crisis, which is out of the scope of this paper.

4. The material that we present in this paper is based on indexing of newspaper clippings about ‘solidarity initiatives’ and forms of ‘collective action’ from five newspapers (Avgi, Epohi, Eleftherotypia, Efimerida ton Syntakton, Kathimerini) since 2011 and from relevant internet sites (www.solidarity4all.gr, www.enallaktikos.gr, www.festival4sce and sites of particular initiatives) and remains open to new additions/removals. Particular initiatives from different ‘categories’, including the ones cited in this paper, have been studied in more detail through observation of (and sometimes participation in) their activities, informal discussions with members and at least one formal interview per case.

5. The last three columns relate to the three perspectives we discuss in the next section of the paper.

6. Since the 1990s, international financial institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the Bank for International Settlements ‘have incorporated strategies of resilience into their logistics of crisis management, financial (de)regulation and development economics’ (Walker and Cooper 2011, 144).

7. The contributions to the Handbook of Social Innovation (Moulaert et al. 2013) share progressive/radical view on social innovation, which distances itself from ‘caring liberalism’ and emphasises the potential for transformation of social relations within and among groups and the aspirations for a different future through practices of citizen participation and the development of different strategies in multiple fields (culture, technology, arts, crafts).

8. See more in this BBC documentary ‘Greeks ditch middleman to embrace “potato revolution”’ from March 15, 2012: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17369989.