IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/urbstu/v54y2017i9p2155-2171.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The spatiality of counter-austerity politics in Athens, Greece: Emergent ‘urban solidarity spaces’

Author

Listed:
  • Athina Arampatzi

Abstract

Grassroots responses and alternatives to austerity that have emerged in Athens and Greece call for a re-thinking of the recent neoliberal crisis through articulations of contestation ‘from below’. This paper addresses this yet nascent theoretical debate through the notion of ‘urban solidarity spaces’, focusing on the spatiality of counter-austerity politics that emerges in and out of places and expands across urban space and beyond. From survival tactics grounded in Athenian neighbourhoods, such as local solidarity initiatives; to solidarity structures and cooperatives; and broader strategies of transformation and alternatives, such as the formation of a solidarity economy. These aim to constitute an empowering process of solidarity-making ‘from below’, and open up spaces for the practice of bottom-up democratic politics vis-à -vis austerity, a ‘politics of fear’ and crisis. The arguments raised here methodologically draw on activist ethnographic research in the ‘Athens of crisis’, between 2012 and 2013.

Suggested Citation

  • Athina Arampatzi, 2017. "The spatiality of counter-austerity politics in Athens, Greece: Emergent ‘urban solidarity spaces’," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 54(9), pages 2155-2171, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:54:y:2017:i:9:p:2155-2171
    DOI: 10.1177/0042098016629311
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098016629311
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0042098016629311?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lila Leontidou, 2012. "Athens in the Mediterranean 'movement of the piazzas' Spontaneity in material and virtual public spaces," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(3), pages 299-312, June.
    2. Costis Hadjimichalis, 2014. "Crisis and land dispossession in Greece as part of the global 'land fever'," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(4-5), pages 502-508, October.
    3. Christy (Chryssanthi) Petropoulou, 2014. "Crisis, Right to the City movements and the question of spontaneity: Athens and Mexico City," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(4-5), pages 563-572, October.
    4. Athina Arampatzi & Walter J Nicholls, 2012. "The Urban Roots of Anti-Neoliberal Social Movements: The Case of Athens, Greece," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 44(11), pages 2591-2610, November.
    5. Jamie Peck & Nik Theodore & Neil Brenner, 2013. "Neoliberal Urbanism Redux?," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 37(3), pages 1091-1099, May.
    6. Lila Leontidou, 2014. "The crisis and its discourses: Quasi-Orientalist attacks on Mediterranean urban spontaneity, informality and joie de vivre," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(4-5), pages 551-562, October.
    7. Costis Hadjimichalis & Ray Hudson, 2014. "Contemporary Crisis Across Europe and the Crisis of Regional Development Theories," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(1), pages 208-218, January.
    8. repec:taf:cityxx:v:16:y:2012:i:4:p:422-430 is not listed on IDEAS
    9. Maria Kaika, 2012. "The economic crisis seen from the everyday," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 16(4), pages 422-430, August.
    10. Stavros Stavrides, 2014. "Emerging common spaces as a challenge to the city of crisis," City, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(4-5), pages 546-550, October.
    11. Chryssanthi Petropoulou, 2010. "From the December Youth Uprising to the Rebirth of Urban Social Movements: A Space–Time Approach," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 34(1), pages 217-224, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Charalampos Tsavdaroglou, 2019. "Reimagining a Transnational Right to the City: No Border Actions and Commoning Practices in Thessaloniki," Social Inclusion, Cogitatio Press, vol. 7(2), pages 219-229.
    2. Liagouras, George, 2018. "On the Edge of the South European Model: Familism, Business and State in Greece," OSF Preprints 8eqmb, Center for Open Science.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Vassilis Arapoglou & Nikos Karadimitriou & Thomas Maloutas & John Sayas, 2021. "Multiple Deprivation in Athens: a legacy of persisting and deepening spatial divisions," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 157, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    2. Luca Salvati & Margherita Carlucci, 2020. "Shaping Dimensions of Urban Complexity: The Role of Economic Structure and Socio-Demographic Local Contexts," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 147(1), pages 263-285, January.
    3. Marilena Simiti, 2014. "Rage and Protest: The case of the Greek Indignant movement," GreeSE – Hellenic Observatory Papers on Greece and Southeast Europe 82, Hellenic Observatory, LSE.
    4. Arapoglou, Vassilis & Karadimitriou, Nikos & Maloutas, Thomas & Sayas, John, 2021. "Multiple deprivation in Athens: a legacy of persisting and deepening spatial divisions," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 108940, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    5. Ilaria Tombolini & Ilaria Zambon & Achille Ippolito & Stathis Grigoriadis & Pere Serra & Luca Salvati, 2015. "Revisiting “Southern” Sprawl: Urban Growth, Socio-Spatial Structure and the Influence of Local Economic Contexts," Economies, MDPI, vol. 3(4), pages 1-23, December.
    6. Saska Petrova & Alexandra Prodromidou, 2019. "Everyday politics of austerity: Infrastructure and vulnerability in times of crisis," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 37(8), pages 1380-1399, December.
    7. Lazaros Karaliotas, 2017. "Staging Equality in Greek Squares: Hybrid Spaces of Political Subjectification," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(1), pages 54-69, January.
    8. Mace, Alan & Holman, Nancy & Paccoud, Antoine & Sundaresan, Jayaraj, 2015. "Coordinating density; working through conviction, suspicion and pragmatism," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 56768, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    9. Gabriel Schwake & Haim Yacobi, 2024. "Decolonisation, gentrification, and the settler-colonial city: Reappropriation and new forms of urban exclusion in Israel," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 42(4), pages 618-638, June.
    10. Jenny Muir, 2014. "Neoliberalising a divided society? The regeneration of Crumlin Road Gaol and Girdwood Park, North Belfast," Local Economy, London South Bank University, vol. 29(1-2), pages 52-64, February.
    11. Nick Bailey & Madeleine Pill, 2015. "Can the State Empower Communities through Localism? An Evaluation of Recent Approaches to Neighbourhood Governance in England," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 33(2), pages 289-304, April.
    12. Ross Beveridge & Philippe Koch, 2021. "Contesting austerity, de-centring the state: Anti-politics and the political horizon of the urban," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 39(3), pages 451-468, May.
    13. Viviana Asara, 2018. "Untangling the radical imaginaries of the Indignados' movement: Commons, autonomy and ecologism," SRE-Disc sre-disc-2018_04, Institute for Multilevel Governance and Development, Department of Socioeconomics, Vienna University of Economics and Business.
    14. Nikos Karadimitriou & Sonia Guelton & Athanasios Pagonis & Silvia Sousa, 2022. "Public Value Capture, Climate Change, and the ‘Infrastructure Gap’ in Coastal Development: Examining Evidence from France and Greece," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-17, June.
    15. Talia Margalit & Adriana Kemp, 2019. "The uneven geographies of post-political planning: Objections to urban regeneration projects in peripheral and central Israeli cities," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 51(4), pages 931-949, June.
    16. Anders Lund Hansen & Henrik Gutzon Larsen & Adam Grydehoj & Eric Clark, 2015. "Financialisation of the built environment in Stockholm and Copenhagen," Working papers wpaper115, Financialisation, Economy, Society & Sustainable Development (FESSUD) Project.
    17. Panagiotis Artelaris & Yannis Tsirbas, 2018. "Anti-austerity voting in an era of economic crisis: Regional evidence from the 2015 referendum in Greece," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 36(4), pages 589-608, June.
    18. Mia Gray & Michael Kitson & Linda Lobao & Ron Martin, 2023. "Understanding the post-COVID state and its geographies," Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 16(1), pages 1-18.
    19. Triantis, Loukas, 2018. "The post-socialist restitution of property as dispossession: Social dynamics and land development in Southern Albania," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 584-592.
    20. Maria Karagianni, 2024. "The urban political ecology of the commons or commoning as a socio-natural process: The case of the Peri-Urban Gardening group in Thessaloniki," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(6), pages 1147-1167, May.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:54:y:2017:i:9:p:2155-2171. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.gla.ac.uk/departments/urbanstudiesjournal .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.