Uncanny companions: kinship, activism, and public health as interdependent modalities of care provision under Greek austerity

Autori

  • Andreas Streinzer Institute for Social Research, Frankfurt am Main

Parole chiave:

Care, Austerity, Solidarity, Resilience, Greece

Abstract

The anthropology of the economic crisis since 2007/ 08 analyses the emergence of solidarity practices among social movements, kinship, and friendship during austerity and the recession in Southern Europe. Analysing these practices alongside “resilience” allows to critically examine the interdependence of “variegated austerity” and the normative appraisal of solidarity networks and familial care practices. The article does so by proposing a 'social autopsy' of the configurations of care around an interlocutor who died in 2015 in a public hospital in Greece. The article reconstructs the symbolic and material aspects of gendered obligations, alternative economies, and austerity in public health in how his daughter Kalypso organised care in his last weeks. This analysis aims to contribute to foregrounding these uncanny compansionships when analysing uncertainty and resilience.

Riferimenti bibliografici

Agelopoulos G. 2018, Put the Blame on Potatoes: Power Relations and the Trajectories of Goods During the Greek Crisis, in Dalakoglou D., Agelopoulos G. (eds.) 2018, Critical Times in Greece: Anthropological Engagements with the Crisis, London, New York: Routledge, 217–26.

Alves de Matos P., Pusceddu A. M. 2021, Austerity, the State and Common Sense in Europe: A Comparative Perspective on Italy and Portugal, «Anthropological Theory», online first.

Athanasiou A. 2014, Precarious Intensities: Gendered Bodies in the Streets and Squares of Greece, «Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society», 40 (1): 1–9.

Bakker I. 2020., Variegated Social Reproduction in Neoliberal Times: Mainstream Silences, Feminist Interventions, «NORA - Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research», 28 (2): 167–72.

Barrios R. E. 2016, Resilience: A Commentary from the Vantage Point of Anthropology, «Annals of Anthropological Practice», 40 (1): 28–38.

Bhattacharya T. 2017, Introduction: Mapping Social Reproduction Theory, in Bhattacharya T. (ed.) 2017, Social Reproduction Theory: Remapping Class, Recentering Oppression, London: Pluto Press, 1-20.

Bodirsky K. 2018, The Commons, Property, and Ownership, «Focaal», 2018 (81): 121–30.

Bonanno L. 2019, Pharmaceutical Redemption: Reconfigurations of Care in Austerity-Laden Athens, University of Manchester.

Bourdieu P. 1998, Acts of Resistance. Against the Tyranny of the Market, New York: The New Press.

Cabot H 2016, ‘Contagious’ Solidarity: Reconfiguring Care and Citizenship in Greece's Social Clinics, «Social Anthropology», 24 (2): 152–66.

Carastathis A. 2016, Intersectionality: Origins, Contestations, Horizons, Lincoln, London: University of Nebraska Press.

Cooper M. 2017, Family Values: Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism, New York: Zone Books.

Dalakoglou S. 2016, Infrastructural Gap: Commons, State and Anthropology, «City», 20 (6): 822–31.

Douzina-Bakalaki P. 2016, Volunteering Mothers: Engaging the Crisis in a Soup Kitchen of Northern Greece, «Anthropology Matters», 17 (1): 1–24.

Douzina-Bakalaki P. 2017a, Crisis, Deprivation, and Provisioning in Xanthi, Northern Greece: Ordinary Ruptures and Extraordinary Continuities, University of Manchester.

Fraser N. 2014, Can Society Be Commodities All the Way down? Post-Polanyian Reflections on Capitalist Crisis, «Economy and Society», 43 (4): 541–58.

Fraser N. 2016, Contradictions of Capital and Care, «New Left Review», (100): 99–117.

Hage G. 2009, Waiting Out the Crisis: On Stuckedness and Governmentality, in Hage G. (ed.) 2009, Waiting, Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 97–106.

Kadir N. 2016, The Autonomous Life? Paradoxes of Hierarchy and Authority in the Squatters Movement in Amsterdam, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Kentikelenis A., Karanikolos M., Reeves A., McKee M., Stuckler D. 2014, Greece's Health Crisis: From Austerity to Denialism, «The Lancet», 383 (9918): 748–53.

Klinenberg E. 2015, Heat Wave, Chicago, London: University of Chicago Press.

Knight D. M. 2018. Fakelaki (Greece), in Ledeneva A. (ed.) 2018, The Global Encyclopaedia of Informality: Understanding Social and Cultural Complexity, London: UCL Press, 182–84.

Knight D. M., Stewart C. 2016, Ethnographies of Austerity: Temporality, Crisis and Affect in Southern Europe, «History and Anthropology», 27 (1): 1–18.

Loizos P., Papataxiarchis E. 1991, Gender and Kinship in Marriage and Alternative Contexts, in Loizos P., Papataxiarchis E. (eds.) 1991, Contested Identities: Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 3–29.

Markantonatou M. 2018, The 'Politics of Fulfilment' as Preliminary for the Making of a Precarious State in Greece, in Fouskas V. K., Dimoulas C. (eds.) 2018, Greece in the 21st Century: The Politics and Economics of a Crisis, London, New York: Routledge, 142–62.

Mezzadri A. 2019, The Value of Social Reproduction: Informal Labour, the Majority World and the Need for Inclusive Theories and Politics, «Radical Philosophy», 2 (4): 33–41.

Narotzky S. 2012, Alternatives to Expanded Accumulation and the Anthropological Imagination Turning Necessity into a Challenge to Capitalism?, in Barber P. G., Leach B., Lem W. (eds.) 2012, Confronting Capital: Critique and Engagement in Anthropology, New York, London: Routledge, 239–52.

Narotzky S. 2020, Introduction: Grassroots Economies in Europe, in Narotzky S. (ed.) 2020, Grassroots Economics. Living with Austerity in Southern Europe, London: Pluto Press, 1–21.

Papadopoulos T., Roumpakis A. 2013, Familistic Welfare Capitalism in Crisis: Social Reproduction and Anti-Social Policy in Greece, «Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy», 29 (3): 204–24.

Papataxiarchis E. 2016, Unwrapping Solidarity? Society Reborn in Austerity, «Social Anthropology», 24 (2): 205–10.

Papataxiarchis E. 2018, Afterword. Pragmatism Against Austerity: Greek Society, Politics and Ethnography in Times of Trouble, in Dalakoglou D., Agelopoulos G. (eds.) 2018, Critical Times in Greece: Anthropological Engagements with the Crisis, London, New York: Routledge, 227–47.

Rakopoulos T. 2016, Solidarity: The Egalitarian Tensions of a Bridge-Concept, «Social Anthropology», 24 (2): 142–51.

Rozakou K. 2016, Socialities of Solidarity: Revisiting the Gift Taboo in Times of Crises, «Social Anthropology», 24 (2): 185–99.

Sapountzi-Krepia D., Raftopoulos V., Psychogiou M., Sakellari E., Toris A., Vrettos A., Arsenos P. 2008, Dimensions of Informal Care in Greece: The Family's Contribution to the Care of Patients Hospitalized in an Oncology Hospital, «Journal of Clinical Nursing», 17 (10): 1287–94.

Sotiropoulou I. 2012, Exchange Networks and Parallel Currencies: Theoretical Approaches and the Case of Greece, University of Crete.

Spourdalakis M. 1985, The Greek Experience, «Socialist Register», 22: 249–67.

Stuckler D., Basu S. 2013, The Body Economic: Why Austerity Kills : Recessions, Budget Battles, and the Politics of Life and Death, New York: Basics Books.

Streinzer A. 2018. Doing Economic Relations Otherwise: Everyday Politics of Solidarity in the TEM Currency Network in Volos, Greece, «Ethnologia Europaea», 48 (1): 69–83.

Streinzer A. 2019. Reconfigurations of Provisioning. Austerity and Interdependency in Volos, Greece, University of Vienna.

Thelen T. 2014, Care/Sorge: Konstruktion, Reproduktion und Auflösung bedeutsamer Bindungen, Bielefeld: transcript.

Thelen T. 2015, Care as Social Organization: Creating, Maintaining and Dissolving Significant Relations, «Anthropological Theory», 15 (4): 497–515.

Theodossopoulos D. 2014, The Ambivalence of Anti-Austerity Indignation in Greece: Resistance, Hegemony and Complicity, «History and Anthropology», 25 (4): 488–506.

Tronto J. 2017, There Is an Alternative: Homines Curans and the Limits of Neoliberalism, «International Journal of Care and Caring», 1 (1): 27–43.

Tsoukala P. 2014, Household Regulation and European Integration: The Family Portrait of a Crisis, «American Journal of Comparative Law», 63 (3): 747–800.

Vaiou D., Kalandides A. 2016, Practices of Collective Action and Solidarity: Reconfigurations of the Public Space in Crisis-Ridden Athens, Greece, «Journal of Housing and the Built Environment», 31 (3): 457–70.

##submission.downloads##

Pubblicato

2021-07-15

Come citare

Streinzer, A. (2021). Uncanny companions: kinship, activism, and public health as interdependent modalities of care provision under Greek austerity. EtnoAntropologia, 9(1), 101–118. Recuperato da https://rivisteclueb.it/index.php/etnoantropologia/article/view/359