Grassroots collective action within and beyond institutional and state solutions: the (re-)politicization of everyday life in crisis-ridden Greece

ABSTRACT

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 on-going wave of anti-austerity 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.

KEYWORDS:

• Commons
• crisis
• everyday politics
• Greece
• SYRIZA
• anti-austerity

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [PhD studentship]. I would like to thank the directors and fellow PhD students at the Centre for Ideology and Discourse Analysis (cIDA) who have offered me helpful feedback. I would also like to thank the two reviewers for their thoughtful comments and efforts towards improving my manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [+3 PhD scholarship].

Notes on contributors

Konstantinos Roussos

Konstantinos Roussos is a PhD student in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. He holds a Master degree in Political Science from Panteion University. His PhD thesis deals with the relationship between collective action, everyday politics and the commons in times of crisis in Greece. More broadly, his research interests evolve around questions over the commons, collective action, post-Marxist theory, urban and regional social movements.Author Social Media Profiles: https://twitter.com/kostisroussos_