Daniel M. Knight

Ethnographies of austerity : temporality, crisis and affect in Southern Europe

This article focuses on how the economic crisis in Southern Europe has stimulated temporal thought (temporality), whether tilted in the direction of historicizing, presentifying, or futural thought, provoking people to rethink their relationship to time. The argument is developed with particular reference to the ethnographies of living with austerity inside the eurozone contained in this special issue. The studies identify the ways the past may be activated, lived, embodied, and re-fashioned under contracting economic horizons. We argue for the empirical study of crisis that captures the decisions or non-decisions that people make, and the actual temporal processes by which they judge responses. We conclude that modern linear historicism is often overridden in such moments by other historicities, showing that in crises, not only time, but history itself as an organizing structure and set of expectations, is up for grabs.

Cultural Proximity: Crisis, Time and Social Memory in Central Greece

In Trikala, central Greece, specific historical events significantly inform understandings of the present economic crisis through what is termed “cultural proximity”. This is the notion that previous times of social and economic turmoil, apparently distant points in time, are embodied within the context of the present. Some past epochs of prosperity and crisis have proved more significant than others in shaping contemporary crisis experience. As accounts of the Great Famine of 1941–1943 are brought to the fore by the current economic crisis, concepts of lineal time and the nationalization of critical events must be interrogated. Through considering theories of time as proposed by Michel Serres, this paper addresses how specific historical events can become embodied during the current economic crisis.

History, time, and economic crisis in Central Greece

1. Introduction: Prosperity and Crisis 2. Ethnography on the Plain of Thessaly 3. Return of the Tsiflikades : Crisis and Land Tenure 1881-1923 4. Hungry with the Same Famine 5. Things to Forget, Things to Remember: The Greek Civil War 6. Public Faces: Food and Protest in the Current Crisis 7. Transforming the Public Sphere 8. Status in Crisis 9. Conclusions: Past, Future, and Beyond

Opportunism and diversification : entrepreneurship and livelihood strategies in uncertain times

ABSTRACT As economic crisis deepens across Europe people are forced to find innovative strategies to accommodate circumstances of chronic uncertainty. Even with a second multi-billion euro bailout package secured for Greece, the prospects of a sustainable recovery in the near future look bleak. However, crisis has also created dynamic spaces for entrepreneurial opportunism and diversification resulting in social mobility, relocation, shifts in livelihood strategy and a burgeoning informal economy. Although economic systems are currently undergoing radical reassessment, social demands such as competitive consumption remain. Opportunities for investment in renewable energy programmes, especially photovoltaics, are also pervasive. By considering cases of business opportunism and livelihood diversification in relation to Max Webers concept of wertrational and notions of uncertainty, this article brings new perspectives to strategies of negotiating the worst economic crisis in living memory.

Pandora's box: Photovoltaic energy and economic crisis in Greece

The Greek photovoltaic program was launched in 2006 and rebranded in 2011 as a way to repay debt and decrease national deficit. The scheme promotes new livelihood opportunities on all levels, from micro-scale home installations to macro-scale solar parks producing energy for international export. Offering potential economic stability to a nation at the fore of global neoliberal crisis, solar energy also presents an alternative to petroleum and lignite that currently dominate the energy sector. However, there are many hesitations and conflicting rhetorics surrounding the photovoltaic drive. Its success or failure as a sustainable economic pathway lies as much in understanding local nuances of social relations and historical consciousness as in governmental policy. This paper presents the findings from preliminary research that aims to “scale” all levels of the Greek photovoltaic experience and raises questions of energy policy, neoliberal rationale, and the relationship between local and global socioeconomic systems. It considers the everyday cultural complexities of implementing energy policy and assesses the contribution of an ethnographic approach to interdisciplinary energy research.

Alternatives to austerity

We are in the age of austerity. Across the globe, there have recently been calls from both the left and the right to rethink policies of austerity and to rein in the forces of globalization. Over the past two years, anti-austerity sentiment has been a major factor in public votes in Europe and the US. Anti-globalization, anti-debt and anti-PPP movements are gaining broad support. Claiming to speak for ordinary families hit by the effects of austerity, parties across the political spectrum are scrambling to improvise new policies. Some alternatives to austerity are simply old ideas repackaged or reappropriated and help to legitimize the current status quo, yet others seem to offer genuine respite from the established order, claiming new forms of social relations and redistribution. The authors argue that only through an analysis of the longer-term origins and multiple guises of austerity can we move towards proposals for social change. They challenge established understandings of austerity and ask readers to imagine seemingly utopian alternatives. Overall, they ask: how can we give a new critical meaning to the concept of the public good?

Mushrooms, Knowledge Exchange and Polytemporality in Kalloni, Greek Macedonia

Abstract Each autumn, the village of Kalloni in Greek Macedonia is woken from its usual seasonal slumber by groups of mushroom hunters. Since the former inhabitants migrated to surrounding towns during the 1940s, Kalloni has gradually become deserted outside of the summer months. The mushroom-picking season ignites dormant social networks of embodied knowledge and history. Mushrooms facilitate a polytemporal link to historical and sensory experience and are central to the cultural repertoire of negotiating social change. History is relived through mushroom-picking and embodied knowledge transmitted. Successive generations maintain a highly ritualized practice infused with notions of historical constructivism, polytemporality, diverse forms of exchange and kinship rivalry. Artifacts, food, information, memory and narratives are exchanged during the mushroom season. The veil of secrecy that surrounds mushroom-picking is only ever partially de-shrouded as misinformation, deceit and competition are widespread. The practice has become culturally proximate as an activity that links dispersed actors to their ancestral village. Mushroom-picking enlivens otherwise abandoned social spaces and activates networks of relations and knowledge. Thus, mushrooms not only help produce a dynamic social arena of discernment, but also facilitate historical consciousness.