Ethnologia Europaea

In the European countries next to the Mediterranean Sea, we presently observe not only the manifold effects of austerity policies but also significant political and social changes triggered by the (economic) crisis since 2008. In many of these countries, we perceive new forms of social practices of networking, leading to growing opposition and protest articulated by local communities or by social movements, which are based on common acts of solidarity, cooperation and the establishment of (close) personal relationships. Many of these forms of protest do not seem to be characterized by typical and well-known political ideologies or trade unions’ demands (cf. Žižek 2012). Instead new practices develop, such as the (re)appropriation of public space, networking, alternative ways of protesting (such as in the case of Occupy or the Indignados), and sharing, inspired by concepts of grassroots-democracy, solidarity, and anti-consumerism (see, e.g., Corredera 2012; Fernández-Savater 2012). These movements can be understood as newcomers in the political arena of many Southern European countries, since they see themselves in a distinct opposition to the established – often clientelistic – political structures of their societies

This article discusses the creation of a participatory web documentary in Marseille in reaction to the spatial imposition and symbolic productions of two new cultural institutions in the city. Based on observations of the web documentary’s producers and participants and an analysis of the final product, it argues that the former have produced a form of resistance in their empowerment of local individuals and perspectives. These perspectives operate in opposition to those of the new institutions that depict Marseille as a “Mediterranean” city while implicitly and explicitly excluding local particularities and practices, which have paradoxically contributed to the city’s identity and international renown.

The article presents an ethnographic study of grassroots green resistance practices to neoliberalism and the visions of (a) more sustainable future(s) in the City of Ljubljana. It analyzes the acts and discourses of local alternative (anarchist) and mainstream (“creative”) communities that oppose cultural and spatial policies at the municipal, national and EU levels. Their practices raise concerns about the instrumentalization of basic human activities and grassroots initiatives as well as NGOs’ new responsibilities previously in domain of the state. Most of them get appropriated by the City in order to prove how it successfully abides by the neoliberal politics of the EU and therefore result in reproducing the system they oppose while communities are stripped of their power for effective resistance.

In an increasing number of realms in everyday life, informal personal relations of trust are being replaced by a constraining formalization of standardization and certification implemented in the name of transparency. Examining the repercussions of this process for small-scale farmers in Italy, this article offers an understanding of ordinary experiences with transparency and explores attempts to resist it. Based on ethnographic research with a neorural activist network that opposes official food-certifications, the article describes ambiguities in ingenious attempts to reinvent procedures to attest the quality and safety of “genuine” food products in more inclusive terms. Restoring the primacy of trust and solidarity, these cases illustrate how a different type of transparency can contribute to realizing a humanistic potential that is nevertheless not free of contradictions.

Recent scholarship on Southern Europe focuses on economic crisis and contestations of hegemonic economic and political arrangements. Solidarity features prominently in these accounts as a notion of opposition to austerity and recession. This article uses solidarity as an entry point, and then shifts attention to the everyday politics of its enactment in the TEM complementary currency network. The article presents three sets of challenges faced by network members: moral discourses around debt, disregard of communal labour and hierarchies created through economic inequalities among network members. The discussion of these challenges places resistance and solidarity in larger discussions about capitalist economies and hegemonic thought and practice that go beyond the discussion of solidarity in Greece and Southern Europe.

This article will examine the relationships between urban space and social movements in times of economic crisis in Athens, Greece. I will focus my attention on the impact that the Syntagma square movement had on those grassroots mobilizations, which precipitated at a local level as soon as the occupation of the Parliament’s square ended in summer 2011. Accordingly, the anti-authoritarian neighbourhood of Exarchia will provide the spatial setting for pointing out how, starting from “the origin of the conflict,” which occurred in December 2008, joie de vivre (Leontidou 2014) is reflected in practices of resistance. I will briefly depict two empirical cases, the time-banking system and the Social Solidarity Network, in order to finally recount Athens as a relevant hub for incubating social movements.

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.