Anthropology and the Crisis in Greece

7/24/2019 Anthropology and the Crisis in Greece

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THE CRISIS IN GREECE

THED RK GESO THE GOLDEN D WN

ANTHROPOLOGICAL

N LYSIS

AND RESPONSIBILITY

IN THE TW ILIGHT ZONE OF THE GREEK CRISIS

ELIS BETH KIRSTOGLOU

The effects of the economic crisis on Greece are many and multifarious. Their analysis

and proper evaluation constitute by no means an easy task for anthropologists. I write

this text in the shadow of two deaths of Greek university students in the provincial town

of Larissa, due to carbon monoxide poisoning. The students, who could not afford to

pay for central heating, had regularly been using an impromptu charcoal-burning brazier

that proved to be lethal. Less than two weeks before this incident, Britain s G uardian

newspaper, drawing on EU data, warned its readers that Greece was a country in serious

poverty with a considerable proportion of its population facing moderate to extreme

material deprivation.^ Greece has been hit by an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, the

effects of which are still diffictilt to measure and appreciate.

At the same tim e, a different but equally severe kind of humanita rian crisis is unfolding

in all major Greek cities. It concerns a large category of people colloquially term ed illegal

immigrants

Jathrometandstes),

but in reality it affects every person who is notor does

not seem to be, Greek. Refugees from countries like Pakistan, Somalia, Afghanistan,

Bangladesh, as well as asylum seekers, sometimes students and even tourists become

victims of racist violence daily on the streets of Athens, Thessaloniki, Chania and Patras.

Most of these assaults have been attribu ted to Go lden Daw n (Chrisi Avgi), a neo-Nazi

political party whose share of votes soared from 0.29 per cent in the 2009 elections to

6.9 per cent in the elections of 2012 and translated into eighteen seats in the Greek

parliam ent. T he party s provocatively fascist public statem ents and the criminal assaults

that have been attributed to their membersincluding the fact that their spokesperson

physically attacked a female, com mu nist pa rty MP on air during a T V show have not

prevented the popularity of Golden Dawn from increasing. The latest opinion polls

(February 2013) estimate its support to be between ten and twelve per cent and they

surmise that should elections be held now. Golden Dawn would become the third political

power in Greek parliament.

As with every other aspect of the current political and economic climate in Greece,

the rise of Golden Dawn is a hugely complex, multidimensional phenomenon. We may

know who constitutes the eponymous corpus of Chrisi Avgi and the inner, militarily-

organized circle comprising the party s m ain struc ture and we may equally dispute

their ideological and political characteryet as anthropologists we are perplexed why

thousands of anonym ous Greeks seem to be offering suppo rt to this neo-Nazi group .

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Many journalists and public commentators prefer to explain away the phenomenon

with the claim that radical nationalism is not a new occurrence. According to this view,

supporters of the far right have always existed. Un til recendy they were hidd en w ithin the

mainstream political parties; now they have merely become apparent as a political force as

a result of disintegration and radical changes in the local political situation. Being content

with such an explanation wotild be tempting, if it were not for the fact that it confines

thousand s of Creeks to the uncomfortable and generalizing category of the fascist .

Ano ther p opular explanation, in contrast to this, is to argue that Colde n Daw n becam e

strong solely in the context of and as a result of the effects of the economic crisis on the

Creek public; though in my opinion this would be a tremendous oversimplification. The

people who are coming closer to Colden Dawn day by day are not making this political

choice solely because they view the party as an anti-systemic political alternative that will

put the final nail in the coffin of the old regime. Rather, it seems that support for neo-

Nazi radicalist discourses is not just an innocent retaliation against the post-war political

system of corruption and feckless governance. I suggest that partly it is its product.

The econom ic crisis and the hum anitarian crisis that have hit the C reek people operate

as a context and as a field (in the sense tha t B ourdieu theorized it) for the rise of extremism

in Creece. Extremism is certainly fuelled by an embedded nationalism that has been

systematically cultivated through education and in the p ublic sphere since Second W orld

War, and this has.been well docu me nted in the anthropology of Cre ece . Xen ophob ic and

extreme right wing discourses find sup por t in the familiar idea of the enem y within , which

has been an instrume ntal co ncept in C old War politics in a coun try whose geopolitical

importance in Cold War years constituted foreign intervention not an exception but a

consistent pattern in Creece s relationship with the West (Kirtsoglou 20 06: 80; cf Clogg

992: 146147). This notion of the enemy within wh at we might call a hollow category

in itself (cf Theodossopoulos 2007)refers to foreigners {allodapoi as sweepingly today

as it did in the past when it was even used to discriminate against communists, proving

that political rhetoric produces mtiltivalent tropes that are easily manipulated in their

perseverance.

One of

the

main political argumen ts that Colden Da wn routinely puts forwardw ith

successrelates to Rindamental cultural differences between foreigners and Creeks.

Based on the claim th at m ost of the immigrants com e from Muslim countries, Chrisi Avgi

cunningly plays with a num ber of social representations that were born and methodically

nurtured in the context of the war against terror in the aftermath of September 11.

Images of backward Taliban who beat wom en in the streetshown o n international

networks and reproduced by local mediahave encouraged a view of the world divided

in term s of a clash of civilizations parad igm, which is a simplistic perspective even

if it is not alien even to the academic world, as the work of authors like Huntington

(1996) demonstrate (cf Brown and Theodossopoulos 2003). The very reasoning that

the United States deployed in order to gain support for intervening in countries like Iraq

and Afghanistanarguing that it was restoring democracy and human rights in those

countriesis today coming to haun t democracy and hum an rights in Creece s tu rbulen t

politics.

Another important dimension of an anthropological explanation of the rise of the

Colden Dawn relates to the character of the nation-state as the fullest institutional

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expression of hum an solidarity we have to date (Willdns 1 992: 26). Currently th e nation

state operatesas the ultimum refugium for an uneasy and confused eth nos, which despite

its pricey commitment to the Westhas always been like an interior exclusion in the

W est itself (cf Kirtsoglou 2 00 6), its asym metric partner . Wh at is going on is perceived

in Greece as reflecting a distinctive lack of European support, and a punitive attitude

from their European partners, and it is steadily transforming the content of yet another

hollow category, that of anti-Americanism. This concept operated for years as a cultural

metap hor for felt and lived power asymm etries in the inte rnatio nal p olitical field. No w an ti-

Americanism is giving way to anti-European ism, and h aphazardly but steadily su staining

collective feelings of closure and xenophobia (cf Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoulos 2010).

This is especially true vis--vis the rules of the Schengen Agreement on immigration,

which are forcing G reece to become a huge detainee camp * wh ilst the co untry struggles to

efiFectively guard its vast coastal areas. The lack of European and international support for

the Greek people and the extreme neo-liberal focus on debt-reducing economic policies,

which treat the state and its inhabitants as one and the same entity, are encouraging

Greeks to further identify with the nation state and providing support to nationalist

ideologies. Cosmopolitan attitudes and discourses increasingly appear to a great number

of Greek people as not only irrelevant, but as a luxury that only elites can afford. As my

Greek informants and fellow citizens often bitterly point out, a suburban lifestyleeven

todayguarantees that the foreigners with whom the upper class fraternizes tend to be

their domestic servants and not the destitute Pakistani refugees, or Somali prostitutes that

cross paths with the disenfranchised inha bitan ts of the centre of Ath ens.

The actual role of the local elites is of course hugely important, particularly in its

historical dimension and depth. The anthropology of Greece has amply documented the

processes through which, for several decades after the Second World War, local elites

specifically cultivated nationalist sentiment through education policy and public culture.

As I noted, extreme right wing discourses were systematically promoted in post WWII

Greece and supported by the Cold War climate. Elsewhere (2006) I have considered

the role and power of the para-state apparatus

{parakrtos .

This is also something that

cannot be understood outside the context of international Cold War politics, flourishing

and culminating as it did under the US-supported military junta that fell in 1974. Post-

1974 Greece however, saw the rise of another kind ofelite that reached its peak of power

and influence in the 1990s. James Faubion has captured the character of this socially

conscious member of

a

literary new wave in his 1993 book

Modern

reek

Lessons,

in the

person of

oukas

Theodorakopoulos, a supporter of homosexual rights in Greece:

Both his education and his experiences were solidly inrernarional (...) he [conformed to] the pattern

of rhe Greek modernizer (... ). They were srudenrs who had studied abroad (.. .) and who brought

what strategies and technologies they had acquired back home w ith them after rhe junra s demise.

(Faubion 1993:234)

Academically educatedmainly away from Greece-and exposed to a self-conscious

cosmopolitanism and tolerance, the representatives ofthisnew elite with its mostly upper

middle-class background which nevertheless cannot be reduced to its class position,

fervently supported the project of deconstructing Greek nationalism, theoretically and

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practically. This was a globally conscious literary new waveto which I see myself as

belongingand it undertook the enormous task of looking nationalism in the eye and

uncovering its heino us role in the form ation of local political selves. Sadly, our c om muna l

efforts were too frequently far removed from lived history, from the embedded memories

of older people like those who crashed on Greek shores in refugee boats after ehe Asia

Minor Gaeaserophe, or of ehose who foughe ehe Axis powers in 1940. Ourdare I

say, elieiseapproach was disconnected from the feelings of the general popeilation, of

people who had acquired considerable consumer power, who looked and behaved like

their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, but who had received a nationalist and formalist

education (cf Mouzelis 1978: 145) which was of dubious usefulness since, outward

appearances notwiehseanding, their professional fueure depended largely on ehe clieneelise

neeworks of polieical pareies. In a counery where conneceions are ehe only m eans eo gee

things done (cf Sutton

2003:

20 0), where the social contract proves to be a fragile myth

(Kiresoglou 2006) and belonging eo an ineernational community as an equal partner

turns out to be mere folly (cf Glogg 1992; Argyrou 2002), citizens are lefe wieh whae

culeural meeaphors they can trust; namely kinship, the state-as-kinship and the naeion-

as-kinship (cf Juse 1989).

The rise of the Golden D awn dem onstrates but does not exhaustthe amplification

of, at times, extreme nationalist sentiments in Greece, but it also indicates the mtilti-level

failure of this reformist movement to institute real change in Greek political culture.

e as auehropologists,** migh t have succeeded in recording th e voices of minorities,

and in exposing oppressive and exclusionist strategies that required our immediate

anthropological attention, but we have not succeeded in making a real difference in the

ideological fabric of Greek society. This failure can be mostly attribu ted to the fact that we

were not always careful in the way we tried to see the world from the inform ants po int of

view, taking local discourses seriously. In ou r hastiness to deconstruct the larger workings

of power, we acted like Galtung s scientific colonialists; we assumed that we knew more

abo ut Greeks than Greeks knew about themselves , and we ofeen located the centre of

gravity for the acquisition of knowledge about the nation (...) outside the nation itself

(Galtung 1967: 13).

The growing influence of Ghrisi Avgi among the m iddle and lower income groups of

Greek society on the one hand, and the refuelling of radical nationalism generally on the

other, are political phenomena that we can no longer afford to analyze from the comfort

zone of our

desks.

For real peop le are losing real lives on the streets of Greek

cities;

and these

people are sometimes Greek and more often non-Greek, but in all cases disempowered,

materially deprived, scared and disenfranchised. They are historically situated selves and

we need to appreciate their histories instead of seeing them as anomalies in hegemonic

discourses of pro gre ss (Asad 1991 ). If we cannot take our inform ants seriously, if we

cannot relate to their painfed histories and if we cannot produce grassroots analysis of

their fears and apprehensions, then we can never represent them anthropologically and

we will never allow their voices to be heard. That task will con tinu e to be u ndertaken by a

group of dark-m inded thugs who ironicallycall themselves The Golden Daw n .

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NOTES

'

^

^ See indicatively but not exhaustively: Theodossopoulos (ed.) 2007; Brown and Ham ilakis (eds)

2003;

Cowan 2000.

* Ihe WallStreetJournal September15 2012, also available online at:

' I am teferring here to the defeat of the Greek Army on the shores of Asia Minor in 1922.

' This com ment does not exclude othet academics (historians, archaeologists and so forth) he te,

however, the focus is on anthropologists.

REFERENCES

Argyrou V. 2002. nthropologyand the WilltoMeaning:APostcolonialCritique London: Pluto Press.

Asad T. 1991 . From the History of Colonial Anthropology to the Anthropology of Western

Hegemony. In G. Stocking (ed.)ColonialSituations:Essayson

the

Contextualisation

ofEthnographic

Knowledge Historyo f nthropologyvol 7 Madison: IJniversity of Winsconsin Press.

Brown K. S. and Y. Hamilakis

2003. TheUsable

Past:

GreekMetahistories Lanham: Lexington books.

Brown K. and D. Theodossopoulos2003.Rearranging Solidarity: Conspitacy and Wotld Order in

Greek and Macedonian Commentaries of Kossovo.Journal

of

Southern Europe

and

the BalkansA(3):

315-335.

Clogg R. 1992.AConcise Historyof Greece Cam btidge: Cambtidge University Press.

Cowan J. (ed.) 2000 Macedonia: IhePoliticso fIdentityand D ifference London: Pluto.

Fauhion J. D.

1993.Modern GreekLessons: APrimerinHistoricalConstructivism Princeton:

Princeton University Press.

Gattung J. 1967. Scientific Colonialism. TransitionVol 30: 10-15.

Huntington S.P.

1996. TheClasho fCivilizationsand theRemakingofWorldOrder New

York:

Simon

Schuster.

Just R.

1989. Triumph ofthe Ethnos. In E. Tonkin, M. McDonald and M . Chapman (eds).History

and Ethnicity London: Roudedge.

Kirtsoglou E.

2006. Unspeakable Ctim es: Athenian Gteek Perceptions of Local and International

Tetrorism. In A. Strathern, P.Stewatt and N. Whitehead (eds).Terrorand V iolence:Imaginationand

the Unimaginable London: Pluto.

Kirtsoglou E. and D . Theodossopoulos2010. The Poetics of Anti-Americanism in Greece: Rhetoric,

Agency and Local Meaning. In E. Kirtsoglou and D. Theodossopoulos (eds).Rhetoricand

the

Workings

of

Power

Special Issue inSocial nalysis54 (1): 106124.

Mouzelis N. 1978.Modern Greece:Facetso fUnderdevelopment NewYork:Holmes Meier.

Sutton D.

2003.Poked by the 'Foreign Finger' in Greece: Conspiracy Theory or the H etmeneutics

of

Suspicion

In K. S. Brown andY.Hamilakis (eds).

The

Usable

Past:

GreekMetahistories Lanham:

Lexington books.

Theodossopoulos

D. 2007. Inttoduction: The 'Tutks' in the Imagination ofthe 'Greeks'. In D.

Theodossopoulos (ed.).When Greeks Think aboutTurks: TheView

rom

Anthropology London: Routledge.

Wilkins

B. T. 1992.Points

ofConflict:

Terrorism

and

CollectiveResponsibility London: Routledge.

DR. ELISABETH KIRSTOGLOU

LECTURER

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

DURHAM UNIVERSITY

[email protected]

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SUPPORTING AP RTYTHAT YOU

D O N T ENTIRELY SUPPORT

DIMITRIOS THEODOSSOPOULOS

Elisabeth K irtsoglou s theoretically p ertin en t co mm enta ry a bou t the rise of fascism in

Greece invites additional anthropological interpretation. Golden Dawn is undeniably

and unashamedly a fascist party and its leadership make no attem pt to hide their extreme

racist and ant i-immigrat ion views, and yet almost every social scientist who has cond ucted

research in and about Greece would agree with Kirtsoglou that there simply is no fascist

ideological proclivity among the overwhelming majority of the Greek population. So,

how do we explain the growing and openly expressed support for a politico-ideological

formation that is avowedly unpopular and rejected in Greece, and yet is now apparently

supported even by people who sayas m y research has also indicated that they do not

like fascism and who do not see themselves as fascists?

Anthropologists are very well suited to answer this type of question, as they conduct

longitudinal research among respondents who may change their political affiliation over

time . They are, thus, in a very good position to compare and trace possible inconsistencies

between attachment to particular political parties and ideological predilections, as these

are expressed by the same respondents in different local contexts. My commentary below

is founded on such longitudinal fieldwork in Greece, in particular the town of Patras,

where I have been doing fieldwork since 1999.

The practice of supporting a party without necessarily (and fully) identifying with its

ideological principles is now widespread in Greece, following the financial crisis and the

heavy austerity measures institu ted as a response to this crisis. Yet there is ano ther political

party, SYRIZA, that has also recently seen a spectacular rise in popularity, far surpassing

even that of Golden Dawn. Yet, SYRIZA bears absolutely no similarityin its political

orientation or its overall political aestheticsto Golden Dawn. It is clearly a party of the

left, and its founding principles exemplify a vision more radical than social democracy

or the centre-left. Yet, the great majority of

its

new supporters now come from the Greek

Socialist party (PASOK), for which support has declined considerably after it attempted

to introduce the first wave of austerity measures.

A majority of ex-Socialist party supportersas well as many voters who would readily

identify with the centre and who in previous elections determined the electoral results

have now transformed SYRIZA into a mighty political power. Not all of them share

the ideological principles of their new party, and most do not share a left-wing vision

that departs in any significant respect from hegemonic, bourgeois versions of governance

familiar from aroun d the world. Those among them w ith whom I have talked in the field

openly admit this particular discrepancy, but they hope, as they explained to me, that

SYRIZA will transform itself into a less radical party, but one strong enough to deliver

them from the plague of

the

austerity m easures. W hile the leadership of SYRIZA is trying

to resolve such inconsistencies by redesigning its political program to match its new and

more conformist electorate supporta compromise that wil inevitably alienate older

supporters who opt for a rift with hegemonic neoliberal politicsthe party s new voters

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FORUM ANTHROPOLOG Y AND THE CRISIS IN GREECE

care less about refined ideological discrepancies than about the unbearable consequences

of austerity.

For the new supporters of SYRIZA, who do not lean towards the left as much as their

leadership, and for the new supporters of Colden Dawn, who in their overwhelming

majority are not fascists, the older political establishm ent has betrayed the confidence of

the people

{tin

mpistostni

tu lau

and here, the Greek people stands for a community

of individuals imagined as similar (in Benedict Anderson s terms), but also for the

particular communities of concrete ordinary citizens whom one knows firsthand: the

many people next door who have been afflicted by the crisis. Against those parties tha t

have betrayed the confidence of a comm unity of either imagined or concrete (known and

nam ed) fellow citizens, man y local actors in Creece express their indign ation {aganaktisi .

Indignation, in turn, helps us contextualize and understand the perceived discrepancies

between the ideology of these voters (conceived as ordinary citizens) and the ideology of

political pa rty elites.

In my search for an anthropologically robust interpretation, I have explored the

metaphorical and semantic empow erment enabled by the concept of indigna tion ,

something that turns out to be a powerful trope in articulating local opposition to

neoliberal austerity in Creece (see Theodossopoulos 2013). In the context of crisis-

afflicted Creece, a discourse of indignation does not merely address a public sentiment

or a set of rhetorical arguments; rather it has emerged to reflect a wider engagement with

accountability. It is from this perspective that indignation can be seen as addressing a

general concern with causalitywith the aetiology of blame (Herzfeld 1992)and with

justice and injustice in the context of the crisis.

Seen from this perspective, the citizens who support parties that confront austerity

such as SYRIZA but also Colden Dawnwithout fully accepting the depth and breadth

of the political values promoted by such parties, are participating in a wider exercise

of negotiating accountability. Conservative voters, who are not fascists, may be seen as

declaring their suppor t for Co lden D aw n, while soft socialists (ex-PASOK supporters)

with consumerist lifestyles, are moving their allegiance to SYRIZA. One message among

many that such political choices entail, is to communicate disapproval (and anger) with

the old parties that controlled politics in the past, including their own previous parties.

Beyond the punitive dimension of shifting political allegiance, disaffected voters who

now support new parties also negotiate many other issues through their indignation:

they challenge the rationality and inevitability of austerity and, more importantly, they

artictilate their awareness and provide personal explanations for the cause-and-effect

interrelationships that led their country to the crisis.

It is in this respect that K irtsoglou s com menta ry encourages a deeper engagem ent w ith

the causes of what appearsat first sightto be unu sual political behaviour. W hile media

reportage highlights the punitive dimension of voting against the old political parties

in Creece, an anthropological (and more nuanced) view can highlight how indignation

has provided the impetus for articulating mtiltiple and complex local explanations of

the crisis (Theodossopoulos 2013). Such local indignant views of accountability are not

mere discursive weapons weapons of the weak as Scott (1985) would have it. Rather,

I suggest that they have played a profound role in determining the shape of the entire

political landscape in Creece (Theodossopoulos, forthcoming).

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In sum,Itend to agree wit h Kir tsoglou th at the majori ty of the thou sand s of an on ym ou s

Greeks

wh o

appea r

to

offer their sup po rt

to

G o l d e n D a w n

do not

fully iden tify w ith

its

neo-Nazi ideological incl inat ions. Yet their heavi ly nat ional is t ideological at tachments

are

rooted in a par t icula r type ofna t ional ed ucat ion andr e spond , asK i r t soglou has o udi ned ,

CO per ceiv ed injustic es rela ted to theo r i enta li s t t rea tm ent of Greece by foreign nat io ns,

as well

as to

c lass inequal i t ies with in G reece. These cons iderat io ns hig hl igh t that

the

recent popular i ty

of

par ties suc h

as

Go ld en D aw n deserve ser ious study, ideal ly from

an

e t hnograph i c po i n t

of

view that wil l enc oura ge a t ten t ion

to the

local m eaningfu lness

of

shifting political allegiances or p h e n o m e n a s u ch as theeme rging xenoph obia (Herzfe ld

2011) . Such

a

nuanced academi c approach

may

p roblemat ize

the

t endency

of

m a n y

journal is ts

to

explain away neo-fascism. Instead ,

it

w ou l d mean ope n i ng

th e way for

acknow l edg i ng

the

complexi ty

of

local views, ev en

if

these appear disagreeable.

REFERENCES

Herzfeld, M. 1992.

TheSocial

Production

of

Indifference: Exploring

the

Symbolic Roots

of Western

Bureaucracy.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Herzfeld, M . 201 1. Crisis Artack: Impromptu Ethnography

in

the G reek Maelstrom. Anthropology

Today 27

0 :

22 26.

Scott, James C. 1985. Weapo ns of theWeak:Everyday Forms ofPeasant Resistance.New Haven: Yale

University Press.

Hieodossopoulos, D. 2013. Infuriated with the Infuriated? Blaming Tactics and Discontent abour the

Greek Financial Crisis.CurrentAnthropology54 (2): 200-221.

The odoss opou los, D . forthcoming. The Poetics of Indignation

in

Greece: Anti-Ausreriry Protest and

Accountability.

In

Pnina Werbner (ed.). Beyond Arab

Spring.

Edinburgh: Edinburgh Universiry Press.

DR DIMITRIOS THEODOSS OPOU LOS

READER IN SOCIAL A NTHR OPOL OGY

SCHOO L OF ANTHROPOL OGY AND CONSERVATION

[email protected]

LOCALISING NATIONAL PROTEST

TH E NUANCES OF GREEK POLITICAL ALLEGL\NCE

DANIEL M. KNIGHT

A six-foot high swastika adorns the wall of the unused railway station in a small village

in Thessaly where I have conducted research since2003. Sprayed in black and red it is

accompanied by slogans calling for the slaughter of immigrants. It is representative of

the reconfiguration of the Greek political scene and the significant international media

attention given to the openly neo-Nazi Golden Dawn. Yet analysis of this seemingly

renegotiated political arena has yet to go much beyond the surface level; I agree that

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excavating complex local and national histories, as Kirtsoglou and Theodossopoeilos

suggest, is imperative to deconstructing the currene crisis and associaeed polieical

ideologies.

My informanes in Thessaly regularly frame ehe Troika ineerveneion as neo-colonialism

and occupaeion, emphasising ehe eemporal proximiey of specific hiseorical momenes.

In eheir accounes, ehey condense evenes eemporally so as eo give meaning eo ehe crisis

sieuaeion. Today s Troika auseeriey is ealked of

in

eerms of Oeeoman and Axis occupaeions,

ehe Greae Famine of 1941^3 and the 1967-74 dictatorship. These narratives emphasise

the Greek struggle against an Oeher, as periods of boeh coUeceive suffering and coUeceive

foreieude (Knighe 2013a). The colourful hiseorical relaeionship between Greece and

Germany is often at the fore of political debate. The Axis occupation of 19411944

whichcoupled with the British blockade of the Eastern Mediterraneanbrought

famine eo Greece, regularly punceuaees discourse, as does seolen wareime gold, th e 1960s

labour migration, and recent renewable energy initiatives that overtly promote German

products (Knight 20 12b ). The fascination w ith Germ any stretches to critiques of current

political trajectories.

Seen in ehis Iighe, the popularity of the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn may seem especially

paradoxical. Although anthropologists may wish eo deeach ehemselves from apparenely

flippant historically sensitive inference, local people often condense Nazi wareime

occupaeion ineo currene German-diceaeed auseeriey, and ehis appears as a reeurn eo ehe

unh ind ered represeneaeion of people s views of

h

world ehae Kiresoglou advocates. This

has been notably evident during public demonstrations where effigies of Angela Merkel

have been draped in Nazi uniforms before being see alighe. These piceures have been

regularly screened on ineernaeional news bulletins and in the printed press.

Given that accounts from the 1940s of villages being burnt to the ground and of

mass executions staged by the Nazis still pervade local ctilture (cf Mazower 1993),

one has to wonder how people legitimise an openly neo-Nazi party. I suggest that the

popularity of the Golden D awn is down to a mixture of disillusionmen t and num bness

with mainstream politics and deep-rooted nationalist ideologies transmitted through

the education system and popular culture. As Theodossopoulos rightly notes, many

supp orters do n ot necessarily agree with the neo-N azi agenda, b ut they still openly give

legitimacy to Golden Dawn s cause if not its tactics.

Kirtsoglou is correct to suggest that immigration has become a tangible problem in

many parts of Greece, partly due to binding international treaties. However, even in

rural Thessaly, where one is hard pushed to come across an immigrant even under the

favoured collective rubric Pakistani

{Pakistanos ,

th e stereotype prevails. It is not unusual

for people who were not directly impacted by critical events to embody them through

wider collective appro priation s: one case is the now regular references to the 1940s famine

made by people in areas that were noe even direcely affeceed by ehe original evene (Knighe

20 12 a). Hen ce even in rural areas ehe imm igraeion p roblem is underseood as ceneral eo

increasing poverey and crim e in G reece. This means ehae one of Golden Dawn s ceneral

objeceives is legieimised as people coneinue eo comprehend social eurmoil ehrough ehe

scaled prisms of

colleceiviey:

ehe ehe family , ehe village , ehe naeion .

The porerait of the imm igrant is a continuation of bubbling nationalist feeling that can

be historically traced at least to the post-war period. Throughout the 1990s, the category

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ANTIIKOPOLOGY AND THE CKISIS IN GSEBIX

most likely to be employed to define the Other was the Albanian

{Alvans

(Herzfeld

2011),

whilst the long-running Macedonian Question (Danforth 1995; Cowan 2000)

is another example of embedded nationalist rhetoric that plays with ideals of history and

collectivity. As Kirtsoglou suggests, the education system and popular ctilture have been

effective tools for building nationalist sentiment, as refiected in how specific periods of

nationalised history become conn ected to the current econom ic crisis.

Ethnographers are in the unique position to discern important elements deeply

embedded in the social and historical fabric in order to better understand seemingly

paradoxical phenomena. Greeks have had to live with the crisis each day of the year for

nearly five years now and they report feeling nu m b to politics (Knigh t 2013b). There

is disillusionment and resignation on all sides as people feel that neither following strict

Troika austerity, as supported by the current coalition governm ent, nor a Grexit

the term coined by the international media to denote a potential Greek exit from the

Eurozone and championed by opposition parties such as SYRIZA and Golden Dawn

wotild provide real solutions. This desperation is refiected in graffiti in peripheral Greek

towns and central Athens. Previously graffiti was aligned to specific political parties, the

green sun of PASOK, the bright red hammer and sickle of the communist KKE. Now

the graffiti is generally very emotional, physically seeping with desperation and anguish

to use Serres (1995:4) evocative language, and pun ctuated periodically by swastikas and

xeno phob ic slogans. The em otion displayed through this graffiti visually highlights a shift

away from the distinctive allegiances that have characterised Greek politics since the fall

of the junta in 1974. Now one can discern parallels between expressions of intense social

suffering and material poverty, and people s effiarts to legitimise an extremist political

party.

In the arena of institutional politics, the increased sense of disillusionment and

precariousness induced by crisis has meant that political support has become dispersed

from the central parties towards two sides offering radical solutionsSYRIZA and

Golden Dawnan alignment acknowledged by SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras. Within

this new configuration. Golden Daw n is a highly visible caricature of resistance. However,

often protest has turned more to the private domain . If

a

voice is to be given back to the

people, and if their everyday perceptions of the world are to be respected, as Kirtsoglou

advocates, then other political acts must be considered in tandem with the public

demonstrations and the shocking political ideologies that trigger international academic

and m edia attention. Alternative forms of dem onstration lie just beneath the surface

and they offer severe critiques of the future. The breakdown of family networks as a

crisis-coping strategy, the increase in suicides in rural areas, and a return to wood-fuelled

heating are but three examples of protest often overlooked as commentators stick to

more w ide-reaching an d absurdly abstract po litical analysis. Analysis of national Politics

(capital P) must be placed alongside the politic s (lower-case P) of everyday life to provide

a meaningful appraisal of social movements in the current context.

Until recendy, extended kin networks were employed in the Greek periphery to

circulate money, food, and other resources to stave off destitution. By Easter 2012,

however, the ruthless insufficiency of these networks in providing for the household was

obvious. In one case, a son who was visiting his elderly father in Trikala shortly afi:er

losing his job in Athens, turned off the freezer and emptied its contents into the back

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FORUM ANTHROPOLOG Y AND THE CRISIS IN GREECE

of his car before re turn ing to the city. In his defence, he argued that he could no longer

afford the electricity to run the appliance and that his hungry children were his foremost

concern. Suicide rates have significantly increased in Greece, by 40 per cent in 2011, and

they regularly punctuate media reportage. These are public examples of local realities that

no longer inhabit the realm of the extraordinary (Knight 2012b: 59). Over the course

of the 2012 Christmas festivities, three people in theTrikala area committed suicide and

openly attributed their act to poverty, hunger and an inability to care for the family. A

recent return en-mass to using wood burning fires

{tz ki

an d

ksilosombes

instead of

expensive petrol-fuelled central heating has reignited questions concerning the position

of Greece in a modern Europe. Furthermore, a European Union-supported initiative

to encourage struggling farmers to install futuristic high-tech (often German-produced)

photo voltaic panels on prim e agricultural land , is viewed by locals as neo-colonialism and

a return to times of German occupation. Protest against enforced austerity is diverse and

often introverted, enacted in the private domain or through smaller collective prisms

than national politics.

I still wish to pick up on Kirtsoglou s point regarding the legacy of Greek a nthropology

over the past twenty years. She argues that a generation of Greek e thnog raphers neglected

anthropological rigour by failing to take local discourses seriously , offering instead elitist

over-theorisations that were disconnected from everyday life. This is rather int riguin g.

I consider anthropologists such as Rene Hirschon, Charles Stewart, David Sutton

and the previous commentators to have produced first-rate ethnography, often dealing

directly with lived history and memory. Indeed, there is an extensive list of scholars who

have carefully recorded lived experience across a wide spectrum of Greek society. It is

incumbent on the next anthropological generationof which I am partto continue to

delve deeper into representing the world from the informant s point of view . On ly then

will we better understand the complexities of wider political movements.

Since I comm enced ethnogra phic research in Greece a decade ago, the socioeconomic

situation has changed irrevocably. It is in this reconstituted landscape that we must tackle

the intense paradoxes of contemporary sociopolitical and historical understanding. I

wou ld advocate an increased dialogue between native and foreign anthrop ologists of

Greece. I am not by any means implying anything inherently problematic, but over the

past decade the anth ropo logy of Greece has been characterised by

clear increase in native

ethnograph ers Greeks studying Greece. There is a notable absence of foreign scholars

in the younger generation (at least in Britain) whereas a well-rounded representation of

Greek political complexities from the ground up can surely only be built on a mixed

cohort of scholars.

Golden Dawn remains the outstanding angry voice trying to locate blame, whilst

in their everyday lives people are forced to suffer the excruciating pain of increasing

austerity. Golden Dawn is then a critique of political dead-end as much as a political

revolution. In a context where uneven neoliberal penetration operates alongside, yet is

not interchangeable with, traditional modes of political and econom ic relations, the

imposition of austerity measures by an external Other inevitably fostets resentment. This

has become particularly problematic since the austerity measures seem to be based on

the notion that fiscal unity implies social, economic and historical homogeneity, and so

denies local specifics. This is to say the measures appear to be based on an assum ption that

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FORUM: ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE CRISIS IN GREBCE

the f inancial unity provided by Eurozone membership could only be buil t on cultural

or historical cohesion (Pryce 20 12 ). Col de n D aw n is bu t one facet of this u nfold ing

economic crisis and i t must be understood in a way that captures the locally significant

nuances in bo th po l it ics a nd Pol i ties . Ki r t sog lou and Theod ossopoulos have opene d

up a forum for a con cen trated study of local mea nin g of w ha t is often po rtraye d as

a m o n o l i th i c p h e n o m e n o n .

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DR. DANIEL M. KNIG HT

NATIONAL BANK OF GREECE POSTDO CTORA L RESEARCH FELLOW

HELLENIC OBSERVATORY, EUROPEAN INST ITU TE

LON DO N SC HOOL OF ECONOM ICS AND POLITICAL SCIENCE

[email protected]

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