Dimitrios Theodossopoulos

Infuriated with the Infuriated? Blaming Tactics and Discontent about the Greek Financial Crisis

The austerity measures introduced as a response to the recent financial crisis in Greece have inspired a wave of discontent among local Greek actors. The latter declared themselves as “indignant” or “infuriated” with the austerity measures. Their indignation, as I demonstrate in this article, has been expressed in terms of diverse arguments that have either encouraged public protest or served as a critique of the protest in culturally intimate contexts. Here, I argue that the critical local discourse about the austerity measures does not merely represent an attempt to evade responsibility but a serious concern with accountability and the unsettling of moral community, which leads local actors to pursue their own interpretative trajectories. The resulting interpretations, in all their diversity, and despite the fact that they do not directly affect political decisions, provide local actors with a sense of discursive empowerment against their perceived peripheralization.

‘They are Taking Our Culture Away’: Tourism and Culture Commodification in the Garifuna Community of Roatan

This article is concerned with the efforts of a Garifuna community in Honduras to claim a space in the growing local tourist economy. Its inhabitants maintain that they suffer a form of culture loss because they do not control the commodification of their culture through tourism. By examining the local perspective, we argue that cultural performances could be treated as cultural property and consumed by tourists in a context of mutual exchange as opposed to a hegemonic one. We suggest that every cultural performance entails a statement about collective identity and thus the local battle for cultural ownership relates to the politics of self-representation and the position of the community in the wider world. The members of the community we studied articulate their desire to become an attraction, which can fully satisfy the tourist quest for authenticity and difference. Only this has to take place on their own terms, to serve their interests and to promote the image they have about themselves and their culture.

The Ambivalence of Anti-Austerity Indignation in Greece: Resistance, Hegemony and Complicity

This article engages with a contradiction that can help us appreciate the ambiguity and complexity of indirect resistance as this is articulated in informal everyday contexts: many citizens in Greece boldly challenge the antisocial austerity measures that have plagued their lives, highlighting how these represent a hegemonic imposition led by foreign centres of economic power. Their anti-hegemonic critique, however, often recycles a dislike for foreigners and xenophobia, echoing more pervasive hegemonic narratives (for example, a crypto-colonial identification of Greece with the West). To deal with this contradiction, I stress the need to (1) de-pathologize local indignant discourse (avoiding the orientalization of anti-austerity discourse as emotional or inconsequential) and (2) acknowledge that indirect resistance may represent an astute critique of visible inequalities, but is not isolated from overarching hegemonic ideological influences that shape local interpretations of historical/economic causality.

Others' Others: Talking About Stereotypes and Constructions of Otherness in Southeast Europe

Stereotypes, in liberal thought, are objects of alarm. As Maryon McDonald has described, since the seminal work of Walter Lippman (1922) and the empirical studies pioneered by Katz and Braly (1933)...

Introduction: The ‘Turks’ in the Imagination of the ‘Greeks’

Greek views of their Turkish neighbours draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources. These include perceptions of resemblance and difference, metaphors of inclusion and exclusion, ideas promoted by national education, adaptations of history, painful personal memories, and experiences of friendly contact. This introductory chapter explores these themes as they emerge in the anthropological literature and suggests that the notion of the generalized Turk, in the mind of those people who identify themselves as Greeks, can be approached as a ‘hollow category’. The concept encapsulates several potential identities for the Turks formulated by Others. The hollow capacity of this type of categorization accommodates a continuous but incomplete process of interpretation and reinterpretation, in the context of which new and old information are combined to substantiate more or less conventional evaluations of the Turks.

The Turks and Their Nation in the Worldview of Greeks in Patras

In this article, the inhabitants of Patras, a town in Peloponnese, discuss their views about the Turks, the most representative ethnic Other in Greece. They remember their childhood attitudes towards the Turks and compare them to the opinions they currently hold. In most cases they feel the need to rationalize their mistrust towards the state of Turkey and their use of overtly negative stereotypes to describe its people. They even appear willing to critically re-evaluate the standard versions of nationalist discourse that inform their views about the Turks. Nevertheless, their attempts to reconsider conventional beliefs about Turkey relies on nationalist readings of history and often results in the unintentional recycling of older stereotypes and the perpetuation of mistrust towards the ethnic Other.

On De-Pathologizing Resistance

This introductory essay draws attention to two processes, the pathologization and exoticization of resistance. Working independently or in parallel, these two processes silence resistance by depoliticizing it as illogical or idealizing it in out-worldly terms. In both cases, resistance is caricatured as abnormal or exotic and distanced from current political priorities. I argue that analytical de-pathologization and de-exoticization of resistance can (a) provide valuable insights on the silencing of resistance and (b) help us understand the relationship between hegemony and resistance in terms that stretch beyond the moderately pathologizing view of political inaction as apathy or “false consciousness”. In my analysis, I also engage with James Scotts seminal view of resistance, which, despite its de-pathologizing orientation, fails to capture the dialectical relationship of resistance and hegemony. I suggest that attention to the pathologizing and exoticizing workings of power may reveal the complexity and compromising ambivalence of resistance and contribute to the broader field of resistance studies, conceived as renewed interest in insurrectionary movements, rebellion, and protest.

Rearranging solidarity: conspiracy and world order in Greek and Macedonian commentaries on Kosovo

In the spring of 1999, after escalating tensions in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, NATO went to war against Serbia. This Western intervention was the object of heated debate in various constituencies around the world: within Yugoslavia, Kosovos majority Albanian population rejoiced in their possible liberation from Serbian oppression, while Serbs questioned the legality of international involvement within a sovereign state. In Europe and America, leftist critics warned of US imperialism, while in China mass protests were sparked when NATO bombs destroyed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. Closer to the combat zone, citizens of other southeast European countries watched uneasily. The break-up of Yugoslavia in the early 1990s had generated bloody conflict in Croatia and Bosnia, where successor states vied to control territory and resources. It had also prompted dispute in the symbolic realm, as Greece objected to the recognition of the Republic of Macedonias sovereignty. The Kosovo war of 1999, though, represented a new set of issues: the ferocity of NATOs aerial assault, the mass displacement of refugees into fragile neighbouring states, and the fundamental character of the war, which pitted Western armed forces directly against a Balkan state, were all unprecedented, and fed fears among amateur and professional commentators that further escalation was likely. In this paper we set out to examine the presence of the Kosovo war in everyday commentary and conversation among the residents of two cities, one Greek and one Macedonian, in 1999. Our aim is first ethnographic: to document how people in the region interpreted a war that Western media, following the line preached by US President Clinton and UK Prime Minister Blair, presented at the time as humanitarian, just and therefore necessary. The narratives we collected were unanimous in viewing NATOs action negatively, and drew on an apparently shared stock of idioms. We consider this apparent ‘meeting of minds’ between Greeks and Macedonians as an interpretive challenge. It is remarkable not only because Greece is and Macedonia aspires to be a member of NATO and the European Union, but also in the light of the previously high-profile and allegedly deep-rooted dispute between the two countries. The explanation we offer in this paper is that the common anti-Western rhetoric and remarkable parallels in explanations of the war demonstrate how deeply cultural factors shape perceptions of political realities.

Philanthropy or solidarity? Ethical dilemmas about humanitarianism in crisis‐afflicted Greece

That philanthropy perpetuates the conditions that cause inequality is an old argument shared by thinkers such as Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde and Slavoj Žižek. I recorded variations of the same argument in local conversations regarding growing humanitarian concern in austerity-ridden Greece. Local critiques of the efficacy of humanitarianism, which I explore here ethnographically, bring to the fore two parallel possibilities engendered by the ‘humanitarian face’ of solidarity initiatives: first, their empowering potential (where solidarity initiatives enhance local social awareness), and second, the de-politicisation of the crisis (a liability that stems from the effectiveness of humanitarianism in ameliorating only temporarily the superficial consequences of the crisis). These two possibilities – which I treat as simultaneous and interrelated – can help us appreciate the complexity and social embeddedness of humanitarian solidarity in times of austerity.

De-Pathologising Resistance: Anthropological interventions

In a time of renewed interest in insurrectionary movements, urban protest, and anti-austerity indignation, the idea of resistance is regaining its relevance in social theory. De-Pathologizing Resistance re-examines resistance as a concept that can aid social analysis, highlighting the dangers of pathologising resistance as illogical and abnormal, or exoticising it in romanticised but patronising terms. Taking a de-pathologising and de-exoticising perspective, this book brings together insights from older and newer studies, the intellectual biographies of its contributing authors, and case studies of resistance in diverse settings, such as Egypt, Greece, Israel, and Mexico. From feminist studies to plaza occupations and anti-systemic uprisings, there is an emerging need to connect the analysis of contemporary protest movements under a broader theoretical re-examination. The idea of resistance?with all of its contradictions and its dynamism?provides such a challenging opportunity. This book was originally published as a special issue of History and Anthropology.