History, time, and economic crisis in central greece

HISTORY, TIME, and ECONOMIC CRISIS in CENTRAL GREECE Daniel M... History, Time, and Economic Crisis in Central Greece... Local experiences of a national and global crisis are the focu

HISTORY,

TIME, and

ECONOMIC CRISIS in

CENTRAL

GREECE

Daniel M Knight

History, Time, and Economic Crisis

in Central Greece

History, Time, and Economic Crisis

in Central Greece

Daniel M Knight Foreword by Robert Layton

Copyright © Daniel M Knight 2015.

All rights reserved.

First published in 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States— a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York,

NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-137-50148-6 (hardcover : alk paper) 1 Trikala (Greece)—Economic conditions—1974- 2 Working class—Greece— Trikala—Economic conditions—21st century 3 Poverty—Greece—Trikala— History—21st century 4 Recessions—Greece—Trikala—History—21st century 5 Financial crises—Greece—Trikala—History—21st century

6 Trikala (Greece)—History I Title.

Those we lost along the way.

Foreword xiAcknowledgments xv

3 Return of the Tsiflikades: Crisis and Land Tenure 1881–1923 41

5 Things to Forget, Things to Remember: The Greek Civil War 85

6 Public Faces: Food and Protest in the Current Crisis 101

Notes 173Bibliography 187Index 205

List of Figures

Figure 1 The location of Thessaly periphery (shaded) and

Figure 2 The four prefectures of Thessaly and their

Figure 3 Trikala prefecture The research for this book

was conducted within the “golden triangle”

Figure 4 Greek Orthodox Church of Agios Konstantinos

with the Ottoman Kursum Tzami in the background 24Figure 5 Setting up for another day’s trade: early morning

Figure 7 Examples of midsummer sales on Asklipiou

The banner on the shop reads “For two more weeks

Figure 8 The sign on the bottom basket reads

“Everything 5 euros.” These were symptomatic

of the sales in all establishments in central Trikala

Dr Knight’s study of contemporary life in a small Greek town is an standing example of anthropology in the Malinowskian tradition, with the bonus that it is also a study of dramatic social change Daniel Knight had the good fortune (from an anthropological perspective) to have already started his fieldwork in 2007, before the 2010 collapse of Greek financial institu-tions threatened the entire economy of the Eurozone and the rest of Western Europe In his account of what followed, vivid case studies of the sufferings

out-of individuals and families are juxtaposed to theoretical insights that emerge, not from armchair speculation but from his overview of the field data: Does hardship strengthen the community or cause division and argument? Can individuals be blamed for the collapse of a system? Why has public life become more animated as people have less money to spend?

The collapse of 2010 was not the first period of hardship in modern Greece, and Daniel’s study is exemplary in documenting previous disasters: the oppression by Ottoman landlords, the Nazi Occupation of World War Two and the Great Famine that it brought about, the 1973 Athens Polytech-nic uprising, that now, in his words, press up against the present as if time had been folded and shortened, not so much cyclical as repetitive Daniel also examines why the Greek Civil War, despite the suffering it caused, has not generally joined these iconic events, except in a mountain village where the anarchy of the civil war seems about to return While many recent anthro-pological studies have shown how landscape can become a source of shared memories and values, in the Greek case recurrent disasters have left people with the sense of alienation from what should be their own landscape.Daniel’s vivid and truly Malinowskian case studies not only convey per-sonal hardship but also humor: the insults exchanged between members of the line at the gas station awaiting a rumored delivery of fuel, political graffiti and the symbolism of the cucumber—“the next cucumber is always around the corner”—the trip to the beach frustrated by the fact that the roads pro-grammed into the cars’ satellite navigation systems had never been built

Cooperation sometimes breaks down during moments of universal scarcity, but solidarity among young friends leads them to share their pocket money, and the intervention of a nongovernment organization to short-circuit entre-preneurial dealings in potatoes restores profit to farmers, and reduces cost to consumers.

As Daniel’s analysis proceeds there are unexpected twists in the plot While Germany, and Angela Merkel in particular, are identified as the causes of Greek suffering, perhaps, in truth, the Greeks were responsible for their own fall from prosperity The unregulated nature of Greek bank loans from 1981

to 2007 encouraged unrepayable indebtedness During the Greek stock ket boom of the 1990s ordinary Greeks speculated in the shares of largely fic-titious businesses such as a “fish farm” that only consisted of a pond and two sheds, creating what seems to be money out of nothing, their gaze focused only on the daily rise and fall in share prices and advised by local amateurs Officials and professionals demanding bribes, tax evasion, overemployment

mar-in government posts, all added to the unsustamar-inable character of the Greek economy But deregulation of the economy and privatization were imposed

on Greece by neoliberal foreigners Trikalinoi know that in northern Europe the Greek people are publicly portrayed as being responsible for the cur-rent financial situation due to their participation in “corrupt” practices and

a “lazy” work ethic, yet they argue their own misdeeds were trivial compared

to those of their political leaders who are now asking everyone to bear the consequences This resonates in Britain, where it was the greed of bankers free to speculate in an unregulated market that caused the financial collapse, yet it is the poor who are bearing the cost of austerity in order to ensure the rich remain wealthy

In a further twist, Daniel discovers that history is not just a source of imagery for representing the present; the present culture has itself developed historically through the very social upheavals that provide the imagery The present social system is built of components that arose at different periods of history, “like a late model car” whose present components were added at dif-ferent times The redistribution of the Ottoman landlords’ holdings created land as private property, which could be divided between children or sold to release the capital Even if this was not an immediate consequence of the land redistribution program, as social ideals began to change during the postwar period, away from wealth based on agricultural land ownership and toward urbanization and education, sellable private property became a valuable asset that could support a child through postgymnasium (secondary school) edu-cation in search of skilled employment off the land A sense of stable social hierarchy based on land-ownership broke down, but patronage (originally based on the relationship between landlord and tenant) continues to exist

alongside neoliberal economic policies For members of long-established families it is social capital slowly built up over decades that gives status, but for others, descended from tenants who have experienced the increasingly ready supply of cash, consumerism is the new source of status, “coupled with highly influential mass media imports from western Europe and the United States.” The former have survived the economic disaster more successfully than the latter.

How, finally, is the rise Daniel notes in public socializing in the bars and streets of the local town to be explained? Foreigners, and even Greeks liv-ing abroad, are puzzled that despite their complaining, Greeks seem still to

be spending money on leisure Daniel’s careful inquiries discover how the constant flow of bad news on television and the lack of food at home drive people into public spaces He discovers how important the public sphere is for sharing suffering and support, and how determined his Greek friends are

to show they are not beaten, but resisting northern European neoliberalism

Dr Knight’s vivid and thoughtful study takes readers into the heart of the current turbulent conditions affecting Western Europe, on the one hand portraying their effects on ordinary lives, on the other uncovering some of their causes and consequences in an anthropologically enlightening manner

Robert Layton

So many people have contributed to the successful completion of my first monograph and these words cannot begin to express my gratitude At Dur-ham University, Stephen M Lyon and Elisabeth Kirtsoglou have been a permanent source of motivation and intellectual support, first as my PhD supervisors and then as colleagues Their reassurance at difficult times and unwavering enthusiasm for the project has been priceless Elisabeth first introduced me to anthropology when I was a first-year undergraduate archae-ologist at the University of Wales, Lampeter, and within six months I was converted to anthropology due in no small part to her persistence A special mention must also be given to Àngels Trias i Valls who, in these formative years at Lampeter, first introduced me to the wonderful world of economic anthropology with her captivating modules and wealth of knowledge.The Department of Anthropology at Durham University has provided

a stimulating and friendly environment throughout my postgraduate years and also now as the setting for my second stint of postdoctoral research as an Addison Wheeler Fellow Special thanks go to Sandra Bell, Ben Campbell, Michael Carrithers, and Mark Jamieson who are, or were once, part of the department and have influenced my work over the past decade In a similar vein, my cohort of fellow doctoral candidates provided an excellent forum for critical debate and empathy for the usual trials and tribulations—thanks

to Damien Boutillon, Gareth Hamilton, Julian Kotze, and especially David Henig

I am forever indebted to Kevin Featherstone and the Hellenic Observatory

at the London School of Economics and Political Science for providing me with my first big break in the form of the National Bank of Greece Postdoc-toral Fellowship (2012–13) and subsequent Visiting Fellowship (2014–17) I

am proud to have Kevin as a friend and colleague The Hellenic Observatory

is an incredible environment in which to commence an academic career and Kevin’s advice and guidance has been incomparable The Hellenic Observa-tory gave me the freedom to write and flourish in a creative atmosphere I

am also grateful to Vassilis Monastiriotis (my mentor at the HO), Spyros Economides, and Ismini Demades for making my time at the LSE something that I will forever treasure.

I cannot adequately express my profound gratitude to Charles Stewart, David Sutton, and Dimitrios Theodossopoulos for their help, advice, inspira-tion, and friendship The “Crisis: Social Suffering and Temporality” research group I ran with Charles at University College London and the associated workshop we convened on economic austerity in southern Europe were important in helping me fine-tune my ideas about crisis, time, and tempo-rality I shall never forget the year I spent in London with Charles attend-ing lectures, workshops, and film screenings galore Absorbing his wisdom continues to shape me both professionally and personally and I am forever indebted to him David first introduced me to the concept of “polytemporal-ity” as well as being an unbelievable source of encouragement for my work

on food Dimitrios has been there since the very beginning and is never too busy to run his eye over drafts and offer his substantial wisdom on all things Greek Together, Charles, David, and Dimitrios have been guiding lights over the past few years My deepest thanks similarly go to Othon Alexan-drakis, Dimitris Antoniou, Tryfon Bampilis, Rebecca Bryant, Stella Chris-tou, Paul Clough, Maria Couroucli, Jane Cowan, Dimitris Dalakoglou, Dimitra Gefou-Madianou, Dimitrios Gkintidis, Janet Hart, Laurie Hart, Michael Herzfeld, Violetta Hionidou, Renée Hirschon, Roger Just, Kostis Kalantzis, Coco Kanters, Kostas Kostis, Sheila Lecoeur, Maria Margaronis, Mark Mazower, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Colette Piault, and Paul Sant Cassia who have all provided friendship, feedback, and enlightening conversation along the way

Cathy Morgan at the British School at Athens has shown unbelievable hospitality and provided an incredible academic environment for my pur-suits in the capital I consider myself fortunate that Nicolas Argenti decided

to change fields from research in Cameroon to study Greece at a convenient time, providing the basis for collaboration and an enduring friendship Victoria Goddard has been an enormous influence, both intellectually and personally—long may this continue Stefan Bouzarovski, Elena Gonzalez-Polledo, Susana Narotzky, Saska Petrova, Rose Thomson, and, at the Univer-sity of St Andrews, Nigel Rapport and Christina Toren are constant sources

of inspiration and my heartfelt thanks go out to them all

I am obliged to David Bennison for sharing his stories of research in ern Thessaly and directing me toward some fascinating literature I remember the adrenaline rush on finding his 1977 thesis on western Thessaly in the vaults of Durham University Library Robert Layton has been an inspirational figure in the development of my identity as an anthropologist and—having

west-followed my journey in some capacity since I was age 18—it is an honor that

he has agreed to write the foreword to this book

I have benefited from feedback from participants at numerous mental seminars, workshops, and international conferences including: the AAA meetings in Montreal, Chicago, and Washington, EASA conferences held in Paris and Tallinn, the ASA meeting in Lampeter, workshops at the British School at Athens, Manchester Metropolitan, universities of Manches-ter, Newcastle, Oxford, Regent’s, and University College London, as well as departmental seminar papers given at Birmingham, Brunel, Durham, Gold-smiths, Kent, London School of Economics, and St Andrews

depart-I also wish to thank Robyn Curtis, Mireille Yanow, Mara Berkoff and Erica Buchman at Palgrave Macmillan who believed in this concept from the outset, and the editorial production team of Jeff LaSala and Jamie Arm-strong for their painstaking work I truly appreciate their patience, advice, and encouragement Although striving for accuracy, ultimately all remaining mistakes and oversights are my own

In the field, my deepest thanks go to the family with whom I have stayed for considerable periods over the past decade in the village of Livadi They are

my family In Trikala, I am grateful to all my research participants, especially

a mechanic, a hairdresser, a travel agent, a dentist, and a cabinetmaker The support of my family in England knows no bounds, my mother, Jennifer, my father, Martyn, and my grandparents, Pamela, Mary, and David The impor-tance of their support cannot be overemphasized as without their belief this journey would, literally, not have been possible Finally, my deepest affection and admiration go to Stavroula Pipyrou who has been a constant source of strength and intellectual stimulation She continues to show unconditional care and commitment We share this exciting and unpredictable voyage Thank you

Introduction: Prosperity and Crisis

My train rattled out of Athens Larissa station for a five-hour

jour-ney north through the heart of mainland Greece Peering out of the murky window I watched a procession of ten-meter-high bill-boards rush past, advertising low-interest credit cards, luxury German cars, and high-fashion retail outlets I was invited to vacation in Dubai, shop at the Mall, invest in a new cell phone, see pop sensation Sakis Rouvas in concert, and charge it all to my MasterCard The first months of fieldwork in the cen-tral Greek town of Trikala on the vast agricultural Plain of Thessaly provided

a similarly striking impression of economic prosperity, with bustling streets, successful new business ventures, and an upbeat air of satisfaction with life

It was November 2007, and nobody could have imagined the horrendous consequences of the full-blown economic meltdown that would explode onto the scene less than two-years later Since I first visited Trikala in 2003, the expanding construction industry, a buoyant public sector, and secure agricul-tural markets supported by European Union initiatives and Eurozone mem-bership represented 30 years of uninterrupted socioeconomic prosperity After decades debating their place on the margins of Europe (Herzfeld 1987, Faubion 1993), Greeks had firmly arrived on the European scene

Amid the glorious warmth of the Mediterranean winter sun, Dorothea,

a well-groomed school teacher in her late fifties, picked me up from kala station in her brand new Fiat Panda purchased by her husband, a for-mer security guard, as an early retirement present Their home, a one-story building on the outskirts of town, was a spacious detached three-bedroom establishment with a substantial garden of unusually scented flowers, a green-house full of plump vegetables, and a garage harboring three cars A second-floor structure of exposed brick and timber was partially built and intended for their daughter who was at the time working in Germany Dorothea and her husband, Stavros, enjoyed a comfortable existence with good pensions,

Tri-additional properties in their villages of origin, and a son with a secure job for life in the public sector The son had just booked a vacation to Las Vegas,

an eight thousand euro bank loan facilitating the fulfillment of a boyhood dream In 2007, life was good

Five years after our first encounter, Dorothea had visibly aged With her hair gray and her face drawn and sagging, she described feeling “physically beaten,” her “bones crushed” by crisis Stavros passed away in 2010 from a sudden heart condition, her son had lost his job due to cutbacks in public sector employment, and her daughter had returned from Germany to care for her mother Dorothea’s godson, heavily in debt and recently separated from his long-term partner, had mysteriously plunged over a mountainside in his car while vacationing in Halkidiki, a suspected suicide Dorothea says that the “the crisis has taken everything from me, my husband, my life savings,

my sanity.” On this day in spring 2012, the garden is overgrown and has ously not been tended for some time, the upper house still stands in a state of exposed brick, and the Fiat Panda has been sold to a relative in Thessaloniki Although she can barely afford to heat her home in winter, Dorothea still pays her daughter’s monthly credit card bill “Soon we will be going hungry; the desperation has got to a level where even the most basic things of life cannot be guaranteed.” Dorothea breaks down in tears as she recalls how her pension has been cut by two-thirds and she has been forced to put her second home in her ancestral village up for sale “How do they expect us to survive?” she asks She claims that “the foreigners have taken our lives, taken our food, and have forced us back in time We thought we were European but they are treating us worse than dogs.”

obvi-I ask Dorothea to reflect on her life just five years previous, “That is another lifetime Those days before the crisis seem so distant now I live in

a different body, see the world through different eyes.” She says that she wants

to throw up when she sees the faces of Greek politicians and foreign leaders

on television, “I change the channel but you cannot get away from them every day I physically retch and my stomach pains from the crisis.” Potently, Dorothea says that “five years ago if you told me that we would be facing famine I wouldn’t have believed you The future was so bright, we all had so much money, so much energy but now I know that I will die having no hope for the future of my grandchildren in Greece.”

The research presented here straddles a period when nearly three decades

of prosperity were quite suddenly replaced by austerity and perpetual sis After coming to power in October 2009 in the context of global eco-nomic recession, Prime Minister Giorgos Papandreou “discovered” that the nation had unsustainable levels of debt and an insurmountable budget defi-cit In May 2010, the so-called Troika—the name given to the International

cri-Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, and European Commission that administer the bailout scheme—announced a one hundred ten billion euro rescue package in return for strictly defined austerity measures Almost over-night, the consequences of the Greek economic crisis started eating away at every part of social life in Trikala From obliterating private business ventures and causing soaring unemployment, to testing the famously durable family support networks and inciting narratives of hunger, occupation, and dispos-session related to previous times of social turmoil, crisis was on the mind Local experiences of a national and global crisis are the focus of this book.More specifically, the study captures how Trikalinoi experienced the onset

of economic crisis and how they continue to draw on past moments of social and economic turmoil to help explain increasing social suffering and mate-rial poverty It charts the journey of people from all walks of life as they attempt to come to terms with the worst economic crash in living memory

By embodying moments of the past such as the Great Famine of 1941–43, Axis occupation, and the reign of late Ottoman–era landlords, Trikalinoi dis-cuss their fears of returning to past epochs of hardship while drawing courage that even the worst crises can be overcome

History and Crisis: A Theory of Cultural Proximity

History plays a central role in shaping Trikalinoi understandings of crisis The perceived proximity of the current economic crisis with specific culturally meaningful past events informs local understandings of social change and turmoil What I term “cultural proximity” is the notion that “two distant points in time can suddenly become close, even superimposed” during peri-ods of rapid social change (Serres 1995a:57–59) On a daily basis Trikalinoi make reference to moments of the past while discussing the twenty-first cen-tury economic crisis The fear of returning to times of hunger as experienced during World War Two is a common thread in crisis discourse, while a Euro-pean Union scheme aimed at decreasing national debt by placing solar panels

on agricultural land is locally perceived as a return to an era of German or Ottoman occupation

Cultural proximity is a key ethnographic and theoretical thread that runs throughout this study Certain episodes of the past resonate with Trikalinoi experiences of the current crisis Some events that once appeared temporally distant or detached are now experienced as very close With the recurrence of

a period of crisis, moments of the past are recalled as if they possess a porary quality; they are culturally proximate The embodiment of the past

contem-to explain current conditions, cultural proximity can be facilitated by lective memory, objects and artifacts, institutionalized nationalism, and the

col-education system During the current economic crisis, the Great Famine of 1941–43, for example, is felt and feared, as if it were a facet of the present day Trikalinoi condense two distant events into a singularly meaningful instant where multiple historical moments are superimposed (Serres 1995a:57–59, Zerubavel 2003:3) Some past events are culturally very close despite being separated by significant periods of linear time, and often by many genera-tions However, not all past crises are recalled with equal prominence—for instance, the divisive events of the Greek Civil War (1946–49) are not part of current crisis discourse in Trikala.

In journalism and media studies, the term “cultural proximity” refers

to a topic that the audience can relate to and identify with (cf Keinonen

2009, Straubhaar 1991) While discussing increasing unemployment and his visions for the future of Greece, a research participant and friend, Thanos, 55, was close to tears, “I cannot face another famine We are overrun by occupi-ers and people are going hungry, the Germans have returned.” He said that

“in 1941 my father searched the streets for scraps of bread and I do not want this future for my children but it is too late, people are hungry with the same famine.” What makes this remark intriguing is that Trikalinoi did not directly suffer from the Great Famine to the extent of urban Athenians due

to subsistence farming and resource-sharing networks However, the event has been nationalized through the education system and popular culture to become embodied today as if it were a significant part of local history.Cultural proximity depends on people recognizing traits in past moments

of upheaval that resonate with their own drastically reworked living ditions, further highlighting how the awareness of time can be culturally conditioned (see Gell 1992) The connection can be manifested through personal memories, embodiment, intergenerational narratives, or national-ized accounts of crisis But it is the recurrence of crisis—a rupturing change

con-in social life that ejects people out of their normal routcon-ine—that triggers cultural proximity The economic crisis has provoked poignant identification with previous periods of turmoil, prompting Trikalinoi to recall how their rel-atives fared during World War Two, make comparisons between Troika land-grabs and Ottoman landlords, and articulate their constant fears of pending famine Past critical events become general reference points for individual and collective suffering and are given a new form of life (Das 1995:1).1

Crisis is embedded through collective memory, personal narratives, and institutionalized historical rhetoric Recollections of former crises are brought

to the fore in later times of social upheaval as if they have been directly experienced and have suddenly become both socially and historically very close Memory is thus “sedimented in the body” through various channels (Bloch 1998, Connerton 1989:34–35, Seremetakis 1994, Sutton 2001:12)

Collective recollections of past crises form part of the conceptual framework that people draw upon to explain their fate this time around On collec-tive memory, Maurice Halbwachs argues that “we preserve memories of each epoch in our lives, and these are continually reproduced; through them, as by

a continual relationship, a sense of our identity is perpetuated” (Halbwachs 1992:47) There are still people residing in Trikala who experienced the Great Famine and Axis occupation firsthand, yet most of the accounts are passed down through the generations in a form of embodied social memory The

“preserved memories” in Halbwach’s terms are reproduced in both public and private domains, facilitating a sense of collective identification with past events

Social memory can be understood to “both separate the local and the global and also fuse them in historical narrative” (Werbner 1995:99) People’s orientation to local and national accounts of the past glorifies (in national myths), laments a loss (as in nostalgia), legitimizes (as in social charters), or recovers a silenced history (as in the ethnic “search for roots”) But why might one event like the Great Famine become culturally proximate while another episode of the same epoch, like the civil war, remains suppressed?2 This ques-tion will be unpacked later in the study

Due to the distinctively recent nature of intense conflict in the Balkan Peninsula, Piero Vereni argues that collective memory ensures a “coherence

of existence and unity” when faced with challenging and perhaps conflicting accounts of history (2000:47–48, Brown 2003) In Trikala, the hybrid pro-cess of piecing together symbolic moments of the past lends meaning to an era of severe suffering and increasing poverty (cf Sutton 1998:66) Memory

is often reconfigured according to ideological and symbolic parameters as well as personal and collective experience (Ballinger 2003:1) On quizzing Thanos as to why he feels so strongly about an impending return to times of famine, he says that “we never learn from history but at least I can under-stand what I am going through now the hunger has come back to remind

us all not to take anything for granted.” Thanos says that his father survived many crises and came out “a stronger person.” Now, so must he

Michel Serres: A Muse

I have found the work of Michel Serres inspirational in helping think through the ethnographic material concerning the embodiment of the past in the present The provocative work of Serres suggests alternative understandings

of time that help dispel preconceptions of history as a sequence of linear events, for as Charles Stewart (2012:197) has argued in Island Greece, West-ern historicism is “but one specific and recently developed principle with

peculiar ideas about linear temporal succession, homogeneous time units causation, and anachronism,” which should not prejudice against alternative conceptions According to Serres (1995a:57), it is the common perception

of time as linear that distorts the perception that some events are ently distant Human relationships to time subjectively vary and are often convoluted (Stewart 2003:482) Events that are located in the distant past can seem very close, while, conversely, episodes that happened recently may

appar-be felt as culturally distant For Trikalinoi, the rupturing nature of economic crisis produces a visibility, an intimacy, between certain historical moments

To explain the concept of folded, pleated, and fluctuating time, Serres employs the classic example of the handkerchief He states that if you take

a handkerchief and spread it out in order to iron it, you can observe tain fixed distances and proximities If you sketch a circle in one area, you can mark out nearby points and measure far-off distances Then take the same handkerchief and crumple it, by putting it in your pocket Two distant points suddenly are close, even superimposed If, further, you tear it in certain places, two points that were close can become very distant The science of nearness and rifts is known as topology,3 while the science of stable and well-defined distances is called metrical geometry (Serres 1995a:60)

cer-When an informant describes how, when as a child walking the streets

of his local neighborhood in Trikala in the 1940s, he was given small pieces

of stale bread to eat by some local women—from which he would save even smaller pieces for his mother, who would accept them despite being dirty and often covered in various forms of nasal excrement—and recounts this when asked directly about the current economic situation, Serres’s theory of proxi-mate time is facilitated by the effects of crisis Aspects of public culture that may be considered “distant” due to the passage of time or changing politics resurface in light of new circumstances

In Serresian terms, the embodiment of past moments of crisis by noi is more than simply a recollection of past events Some memories, texts, and pictures have a physical quality seeping with history As witnesses to ter-rible events—either firsthand or through relatives—many Trikalinoi embody the tragic times of the Great Famine, Axis occupation, or military dictator-ship This is to say that memories of crises are embodied and experienced to the core; they are not merely a reaction to or an analysis of a contemporary critical event

Trikali-Serres himself was brought up in a time of “hunger and rationing, death and bombings” and his accounts of cultural proximity relate closely to those of Trikalinoi His “experience”—though not necessarily firsthand—was shaped

by major global events such as the war in Spain in 1936 and the blitzkrieg of

1939, the concentration camps of World War Two, reprisal attacks after the

liberation of France, and, at the age of 15, the bombing of Hiroshima (Serres 1995a:2) He terms these experiences “the vital environment” that provided the “background noise”4 to life thereafter Serres’s generation were passive to the events due to age, the generation before were actively engaged with the destruction and desolation of human life.

Serres recounts how he cannot look at Picasso’s “Guernica” due to its ciation with the Spanish War of 1936 (1995a:2–3) When he looks at such pictures, he physically feels history seeping from them, as witnesses to terrible events Such things are “symptoms of evil,” he argues, not merely reactions to

asso-or analysis of a contempasso-orary crisis The circumstances he has experienced, although not firsthand, have been embodied and inherently influence his work today and his interpretation of current events.5 Therefore, cultural proximity must be understood not merely as a memory or a recollection but

as physicality, a feeling, an embodiment

I consider Serres to be an as-if informant when he states,

I have never recovered—I don’t believe I’ll ever recover Now that I am older,

I am still hungry with the same famine, I still hear the same sirens; I would feel sick at the same violence, to my dying day Near the midpoint of this century (1900s) my generation was born into the worst tragedies of history, without being able to act Even my own childhood photographs, happily scarce, are things I can’t bear to look at They are lucky, those who are nostalgic about their youth We suffocated in an unbreathable air heavy with misfortune, violence and crime, defeat and humiliation, guilt (such events as) the death camps were echoed by Nagasaki and Hiroshima, which were just as destructive

of history and conscience—in both cases in a radical way, by attacking the very roots of what makes us human—tearing apart not just historic time but the time frame of human evolution (Serres 1995a:4)

The fact that later generations of Trikalinoi talk of the physicalities of famine demonstrates how the past is experienced during the economic crisis; people still “feel hungry with the same famine” that their parents or grandparents are believed to have experienced At times of dramatic social change, Trikalinoi draw on culturally proximate events in order to decipher present-day circum-stances and render them, if not bearable, then at least comprehendible Serres argues that the fear of returning to the circumstances of a treacherous past is socially embedded; it is like hearing the dogs bark once again as a warning to take another path to avoid the barks and bites when facing potential “rebirths

of past situations” (1995a:21, 42)

Contemporary crisis experience is composed of multiple moments of the past; it is the whole of a set of component parts Serres provides the exam-ple of the late-model car that forms the disparate aggregate of scientific and

technical solutions dating from different periods One can date it component

by component: This part was invented at the turn of the century, another, ten years ago, and Carnot’s cycle is almost two hundred years old Not to mention that the wheel dates back to Neolithic times The ensemble is only contemporary by assemblage, by its design, its finish, sometimes only by the slickness of the advertising surrounding it (Serres 1995a:45)

The “assemblage” of a present-day crisis finds its component parts rooted

in past events in order to form a recognizable unity (Serres 1995b:2, also Deleuze 1991:38, Hodges 2007).6 The current economic crisis in Greece is not a situation devoid of history but has its roots in the liberalization of national markets in the 1980s, European Union accession, and Eurozone incorporation One may even argue that the seeds of economic failure were planted in 1950s transatlantic aid programs or the agrarian reforms of the early 1900s Similarly, Trikalinoi understandings of critical events are not devoid of component parts—the cultural proximity of certain moments of the past fashion how people deal with the twenty-first century economic cri-sis Current crisis experience is an assemblage of direct experience (such as the 1967–74 dictatorship or 1990s stock market crash), familial narratives (Axis occupation), and institutionalized accounts (famine and Ottoman occupa-tion) of turmoil The current crisis is a “polytemporal” event—existing as part of our own era, and being an assemblage of reconstituted historical parts (Serres 1995a:47) Crisis experience is an “active synthesis,” a “scrambling” (Stewart 2012:191, see also Collard 1989) of moments of past hardship This

is in contrast to common perceptions of events being constrained to their own time, their own period, unable to communicate beyond their own boundar-ies, imprisoning history and critical events, suffocating the remarkable con-nections between seemingly distant events An episode that is bounded by strict conventions of time and space may be easier to conceptualize, but as Serres (1995b:2) states, “a cartload of bricks isn’t a house.”

The concept of cultural proximity depends on a reassessment of time not

as a mere “passing,” but as an extraordinarily complex mixture of stopping points, ruptures, and gaps, in a visible disorder much like Serres’s descrip-tion of the handkerchief Serres offers a theory of percolating and fluctuating time, “dancing like flames” that allows for such a perception of cultural and temporal simultaneity He argues that “time doesn’t pass, it percolates This means that it passes and it doesn’t pass.” It filters, “one flux passes through, while another does not” (in our case, the events of the civil war flow through the cultural percolator while the Great Famine does not) (Serres 1995a:58) Some segments of time get caught in the filtration process; they remain con-temporary, they remain proximate “It is like the fluctuations in the weather”

he argues—in French, as in Greek, a single word means both time and

weather Continuing with his rich metaphors, Serres suggests that time may

at first appear as though flowing like a river passing beneath a bridge—the Heraclitean view of time—however, one fails to consider the invisible coun-tercurrents running beneath the surface in the opposite direction or the hid-den turbulences that remain out of sight to the casual observer

Trikalinoi draw on the past, emergent aspects of the present, and visions

of the future to assemble their crisis experience An object or circumstance is thus polychromic, polytemporal, topological, and reveals a time that is gath-ered together, with multiple pleats (cf Bryant 2014).7 For Serres (1995a:61), the concept of preserving past events in order to elucidate later circumstances

is akin to how a glacier preserves a body frozen for 50 years and deposits it looking as young as when the person had first died, while his children (other events) have grown old

Through cultural proximity bringing together many pasts into porary crisis experience, there is a collective feeling of pulling an object or

contem-a burden from the depths of history There contem-are phrcontem-ases repecontem-ated regulcontem-arly

by Trikalinoi, such as “We don’t want to return to those bleak times,” “We thought that we would never have to go through that again,” “They were the worst times that scarred Greece and all the people that lived through them, how can we forget?” “Those people were different, they carried with them the pain of the Famine,” “Only now can I appreciate what my parents and ancestors went through,” and “Those times have returned.” Such evocative reiterations highlight the weight of past eras of hardship and refer to the burden being borne not only by the individual but also by the collective suf-fering of a nation

Other approaches to how the past is experienced in the present are also helpful in unpacking individual and collective understandings of crisis, including affective history (Navaro-Yashin 2009, 2012, Pipyrou 2014a), his-torical consciousness (Stewart 2012), polytemporality (Sutton 2011, Knight 2014b), and trauma (Antze and Lambek 1996, Argenti 2007, Cappelletto

2003, Fassin and Rechtman 2009, Lester 2013) In Trikala, crisis experience has become a complex assemblage of past, present, and future ambitions, hopes, failures, financial capacities, and political rhetorics Actors may draw

on moments of the past, projections of the future, or on events in far-off lands

to explain drastic local increases in suffering and material poverty (Narotzky 2011) As well as drawing on history, people engage with mass media narra-tives of trauma to negotiate their niche in global narratives of suffering and victimhood (Ballinger 2003 Wilk 1995).8

As work in psychology and psychoanalysis has shown, intense social fering creates complex and long-lasting forms of trauma—collective and individual—that are qualitatively different (Fassin and Rechtman 2009)

suf-Processes of contrition, retribution, blame, and forgiveness influence the remembered and/or affective past and shape how people invest in desired futures (Stewart 2012, Navaro-Yashin 2012) Shared experiences of a trau-matic past facilitate the passage of specific historical moments from personal

to public memory As Francesca Cappelletto (2003:242), among others, has argued, the telling of stories and exchange of personal recollections can come together to form a communal experience of a traumatic past, emphasizing that a collective “mental presence of the past” (Bloch 1998:60) affects peo-ple’s everyday actions Discussing massacres committed by German troops in northern Italy during World War Two, Cappelletto notes that the traumatic event literally (rather than symbolically) returns to invade everyday life Even though the episode was only experienced firsthand by a handful of people still alive today, the community narrates a collective memory:

The intense solidarity among participants in the narrative sessions is indicative

of the affective aspects of memory, and of the process through which, over time, the story acquires a form beyond the identity of the individual teller, becoming in effect a medium of communication within a group and between the group and outsiders Participants in the sessions feel as if they were the bearers and transmitters of an unforgettable memory (Cappelletto 2003:250)

Certainly for Trikalinoi the residue of past trauma is apparent in their current distress, with moments of the past being continuously relived and reenacted (cf Kenny 1996:152).9 In some cases people “recover” memories that they never knew existed (cf Antze 1996, Young 1996, Feuchtwang 2010) lending credence to the notion that traumatic events are not fully open to experi-ence at the time of occurrence, but only later in reenactments Cathy Caruth (1991) has argued that extreme experiences fracture time and introduce what she terms “belatedness”—the reenactment of repressed memories well after the original event (Caruth 1991, Argenti 2007:250) Nicolas Argenti (2007:23–24) suggests that the most inescapable feature of violent pasts is that they cannot be left behind because they exist in the perpetual present

of the struggles and cleavages they have spawned As with Trikalinoi, for Argenti, people bear witness to some moments of the past through embod-ied living practices of remembering rather than monolithic memorialization According to Ron Eyerman (2001:2) the intergenerational transmission of trauma produces “cultural trauma,” a tear in the social fabric that is collec-tively recognized by a community that has not necessarily experienced the event directly (see also Argenti and Schramm 2010) However, scholars such

as Stephen Feuchtwang (2010) note that the intergenerational transmission

of trauma beyond those who experienced the event firsthand is rare; instead there is more often “the transmission of an event that was traumatic.” In order

for trauma to be transmitted intergenerationally, Feuchtwang argues, a matized person must commit traumatizing violence to someone else as the result of the original traumatic experience (Feuchtwang 2010:229) Rather, historical or biographical narrative transmission of traumatic events is made possible through nationalist memorialization and family grievance and ritu-alization that galvanize people within the locality.

trau-Affective narratives of traumatic events provide different versions of toricization and (re)construction of memory (Hirsch and Stewart 2005, Stewart 2012:203)10 while actors play with notions of presence and absence, truth and imagination (Navaro-Yashin 2007:80, Pipyrou 2014a:190) As with stories of famine in Trikala, the past is allocated alternative plots and circulated in the public domain where it is eventually adopted as memory, a pool of inspiration from where people create novel historicizations (Stewart 2012:203) People actively contribute to the make-believe that regularly gets transmitted through intergenerational stories to eventually constitute a tan-gible part of local affective history (Navaro-Yashin 2012:5, Pipyrou 2014a, also Stewart 2012:189) As Stavroula Pipyrou (2014a) has recently argued for narratives of death in central Greece, affective histories “grab people” (Weth-erell 2012), either domesticating and taming or exaggerating and agitating the most troubling aspects of the past (Navaro-Yashin 2009:6)

his-Although theories of trauma and affective history are helpful in unpacking the case at hand, I have chosen to focus on the concepts of cultural proximity and polytemporality as these are more pertinent to how my research par-ticipants themselves talk about the past Trikalinoi often “bounce around” through the past, paying little respect to temporal distance, condensing events that are separated by decades, sometimes centuries, of linear time into singularly meaningful moments in the present Dorothea says that the eco-nomic crisis has been like an “earthquake or flood” that has shaken Trikala

so violently that the past has been brought back to the surface, “We look through the cracks and we see our history racing towards us, coming back to life in the current crisis.” She says that people rhetorically pose the questions

“Who are we?” “What have we become?” “Where are we now when are we

now?” In following my informants’ lead, I propose that specific moments of the past are experienced as culturally and temporally proximate in the context

of economic crisis

The Greek Economic Crisis (2009–)

Nothing humanizes us like aporia—that state of intense puzzlement in which

we find ourselves when our certainties fall to pieces; when suddenly we get caught in an impasse, at a loss to explain what our eyes can see, our fingers can touch, our ears can hear At those rare moments, as our reason valiantly

struggles to fathom what the senses are reporting, our aporia humbles us and readies the prepared mind for previously unthinkable truths And when the

aporia casts its net far and wide to ensnare the whole of humanity, we know we

are at a very special moment in history September 2008 (the start of the global economic meltdown) was just such a moment (Varoufakis 2013:1)

Various time lines place the start of the Greek crisis at different points cialist financial news outlets tend to focus on precise technical indicators, whereas newspapers embroider a longer narrative.11 For example, Bloomberg

Spe-starts its time line with the inability of the PASOK government to fulfill its promise to reduce the budget deficit within 12 months when it came to power in October 2009 The Financial Times starts the crisis on December 8,

2009, when Fitch cut ratings on Greek debt to BBB plus with a negative outlook, prompting heavy selling of Greek stocks and bonds (The Financial Times, October 21, 2011) Newspapers and radio sources tend to embellish

the crisis as a more elaborate story involving earlier antecedents and parallels Newspapers such as the Daily Telegraph and The Guardian commence with

Greece joining the Eurozone in January 2001, followed by a blow-by-blow account of events since (The Telegraph, June 16, 2011, The Guardian, May 5,

2010) Further historical analysis by academics and political analysts place the cause of the crisis in the fast-track market liberalization process com-mencing with Greek accession to the European Economic Community (later

to become the European Union) in 1981, only seven years after the fall of the military dictatorship and associated structured economics (Knight 2013a,

cf Klein 2008:155–68), all set against the background of an unsustainable global system (Varoufakis 2013)

It is important to distinguish between what for financial analysts are the key drivers in the trajectory for risk assessments, which are the yield on ten-year Greek government bonds jumping from 5 percent at the end of 2009

to close in on an unsustainable 20 percent by mid-2011 By June 13, 2011, S&P had downgraded Greece’s credit rating to CCC, four steps from default, and the lowest for any country in the world, reflecting their view that “there

is a significantly higher likelihood of one or more defaults” (Reuters, June 13,

2011) Another popular measure for likely default is the spread investors demand to hold Greek ten-year securities instead of similar maturity German bonds, which had climbed to a historical high of over 14 percent by mid-

2011 Financial analysts typically reported how close Greece was to eign default” as the result of these yields: The higher these are, the more they indicate a lack of confidence by markets in the ability of Greece to repay its debts If it rises too high, the government will no longer be able to raise the funds necessary without paying punitive rates of interest, which then will

“sover-threaten the entire nation’s viability Since 2010 there has been much media speculation that if Greece can no longer rein in expenditures to meet its obli-gations, there will be blood on the streets, with some extreme theories still speculating on civil war, military dictatorship, and Eurozone collapse.Austerity measures and fear of return to a weaker currency meant that from 2010 to 2013 wealthy savers and investors withdrew their funds from Greek banks, preferring to place investments abroad in stronger foreign cur-rencies As recently as mid-2012, there was talk of the Greek banking system

“collapsing.” Financial reporting often refers to the Greek crisis as “Europe’s Lehman’s moment” (Gilbert and McCormick 2011), in reference to the par-allel with events in the United States in 2008 that triggered the worldwide crisis There is still reference to “Armageddon scenarios” across Europe should the Greek government negotiating austerities and bailouts decide in favor

of seeking to default on its loans, as was narrowly avoided in the May and June 2012 general elections The “Greek crisis” has become a household term across Europe and continues to conjure notions of corruption, protest, and international economic uncertainty

In Trikala, the first rumblings of economic downturn publicly surfaced toward the end of 2008 when many national economies went into reces-sion This roused speculation within Greece as to the country’s own economic situation By October 2009 the world came to learn of Greece’s extensive financial problems, with the first Troika bailout worth one hundred ten bil-lion euros (£95 billion, $146.2 billion) agreed in May 2010 and a second of one hundred thirty billion euros in February 2012 In 2010, national debt lay

at 115 percent of the GDP (above 300 billion euros), rising to 180 percent

in 2013 Inflation was at a 13-year high of 5.4 percent, the budget deficit registering 13.6 percent (Pryce 2012) The official deficit figures from 1999

to 2009 do not go beyond 8 percent (it was officially 7.9 percent in 2004) After being above 10 percent of GDP in 1995, official figures for the deficit fell to 1.8 percent in 1999, thus complying with the criteria for European single currency membership (Eurostat 2004:4, also National Statistical Ser-vice of Greece) In 2003 the Greek government reported a deficit of 1.7 per-cent but Eurostat refused to verify this figure and declined to accept official government debt statistics, asking for revisions dating back to 1997.12 The Greek government then revised the 2003 deficit to 4.6 percent of GDP Euro-stat reported this revision as “exceptional,” and once again questioned the reliability of Greek deficit statistics over the period of 1995–2003 (2004:2) From 2006 to 2008 the official deficit figures were stable at between 2.3 and 3.4  percent (Ministry of Economy and Finance 200813), yet in 2009 the deficit was suddenly revealed to be 13.6 percent after an original estimate of 1.8 percent

As a prerequisite for the initial one hundred ten billion euro bailout age, the government was forced to implement an array of austerity measures, including reducing the size of the public sector and scrapping bonuses for employees, capping annual holiday bonuses, applying wage freezes, increas-ing VAT from 21 percent to 23 percent, and encouraged to raise the retire-ment age to 65 for men and women (it was formally 57 and 52, respectively) Other requirements included improving methods of tax collection,14 rais-ing taxes on fuel, alcohol, and tobacco by 10 percent, reducing pensions, increasing taxes on new construction, extra taxes on all residential dwellings, and encouraging growth in the private sector (The Economist, vol 396, issue

pack-8689, July 3, 2010) Other later policies included creating new licenses in the highly monopolized haulage sector and the privatization of transport and energy sectors In 2013, as unemployment neared 30 percent (and youth unemployment 70 percent), perhaps unsurprisingly most Trikalinoi had lost count of the new policies and taxes

Trikalinoi generally trace the origins of crisis to either 1981 European gration or joining the Eurozone in 2001 After originally failing to meet the Maastricht criteria for Eurozone incorporation in 1999, Greece was required

inte-to implement a series of measures, including deficit reduction and cuts in lic spending (Salvatore 2002:121, Leblond 2004, Portone 2004) For exam-ple, by the Maastricht criteria the inflation rate had to be less than 2 percent,

pub-in 1999 it was at 4 percent pub-in Greece and the public sector was also the most inflated in Europe Wim Duisenberg, then President of the European Central Bank, stated that Greece still had “a lot of work to do to improve its economy and bring inflation under control.”15 Despite these general reservations, then Greek Prime Minister Kostas Simitis (PASOK—Panhellenic Socialist Move-ment) stated that “Greece would have much greater economic stability” once joining the Eurozone Investors also voiced their concerns at allowing Greece

to join the euro, arguing that this would send out the wrong signal to financial markets by suggesting that other weaker economies may be allowed to join in the future without complying fully with membership conditions

The official figures for meeting the Maastricht criteria were probably manipulated, as were the deficit statistics This was not only a Greek phenom-enon; it was proven that the Italian government also “massaged” economic statistics in 1997 to facilitate entry into the European single currency (cf Piga 2001) In hindsight, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has condemned the role of investment banks in helping Greece falsify national statistics It has also been suggested that the Greek government took advantage of the fixed exchange rate (340.75 drachmas to the euro) to freeze public wages and round-up commodity prices The Greek conservative newspaper Kathimerini

writes on October 17, 2001,

Greece’s adoption of the physical euro will have major implications for a try that has traditionally relied more heavily on cash transactions than has most

coun-of Europe which implies that the actual physical changeover will have at least as much impact in Greece as elsewhere And an awkward exchange parity (340.75 drachmas to the euro) will not exactly set people’s minds to rest as they pore over conversion charts to see what a chunk of feta will cost under the new regime 75% of citizens fear price abuses on adopting the euro

Other fears abounded The BBC reported in April 2000,

There are also fears that the Greek economy has qualified for the euro by

“limbo dancing”—making great efforts to meet the requirements only to let things go as soon as they are under the barrier Even if the Greek economy can take the discipline of EU membership, there is likely to be tough times ahead The Eurozone’s economies may be growing quickly these days, but it is also true that the whole of the zone should now be acting as one giant domestic economy That is likely to mean that fewer companies will dominate the mar-ket and that may well mean that the prosperous areas of Europe will become richer at the expense of outlying regions For Greece, this means the euro

is even more of a risk than it is for other members As the poorest country in Euroland, it is hoping that the overall economic benefits of membership will outweigh the possible loss of homegrown economic success, as money and business flows to the economic centre of Europe

Such fears were well founded In April 2010, German Chancellor Angela Merkel suggested that Greece should not have been allowed to join the euro,

In 2000 we had a situation when we were confronted with the question of whether Greece should be able to join the eurozone It turned [out] that the decision may not have been scrutinised closely enough

Initial Local Reactions to Crisis

In 2009, Trikalinoi reaction to impending economic crisis was a mixture of disbelief, outrage, and fatalistic resignation, but little surprise The public were accustomed to regular political scandals and it is openly acknowledged that corruption is part and parcel of a government that “eats money.”16 How-ever, as the severity of the state of the nation’s coffers was further revealed, public rhetoric, fueled by media reports, started to change Just after the first austerity package was announced in 2010, Ilias, 44, explains,

I can’t say I am shocked at what our politicians have done and the position they have put us in My first reaction was “ack, look at what these assholes

have done again.” I thought that it might blow-over in a few weeks like all the other “thrillers” they give us on television Yet this one did not go away and the accusations got worse, more statistics were discovered to be false (Ilias, 44, builder, Trikala)

Ilias says that his suspicions about the severity of the economic situation were only raised when the prime minister kept appearing on television “This seemed to be a bit more than a regular scandal” he recalls “The Prime Min-ister was serious, very precise and obviously implied that this was a collec-tive problem that had been caused by the previous (Nea Dimokratia [New Democracy]) government.” As New Year 2010 approached, an evening stroll through any neighborhood would be accompanied by the hubbub of tele-visions turned up to full volume and the prime minister’s booming voice addressing the nation Ilias remembers that “it was the only thing that every-one was talking about People became economic experts overnight We now all talk about ‘spreads’ and ‘bonds,’ words that we never used before.” Like Ilias, Dorothea and her husband discussed “nothing but economic statistics and corrupt politicians but this was with a background of thinking about the bad times of the past.”

That people became “economic experts” highlighted the intensity of the situation in 2009–10 Satirical shows, such as the hugely popular Al-Tsantiri News and Radio Arvila, ironically reflected on the discovery of falsified statis-

tics, European integration, pending austerity measures, and collective fears of returning to previous eras of crisis The mass media immediately picked up

on public sentiment concerning the past, providing interviews with people that had survived World War Two, airing theater that pertained to famine and war, comparing the global recession to the 1929–32 economic crisis, and highlighting previous occasions when Greek politicians had fallen from grace Eleni, 51, a primary school teacher who resides in a relatively wealthy suburb of Trikala, provides a representative account of public fears in early

2010 as the first bailout was being negotiated,

We are scared We feel so insecure; life may never be the same again The austerity measures will affect only the normal people, the politicians and those with contacts will continue to “eat money.” They are the cause of the crisis and they will not be punished, but we will Therefore there can be no end to the cri-sis because the problem (the corrupt politicians) is not being targeted If they get taken to court they pay-off the judges We are paying for their behavior, their money-eating; there is scandal after scandal (Eleni, 51, Trikala)

Talking to me again in 2011, Eleni cited her primary concern to be the tion in pensions that would mean “people will have to work longer and harder

reduc-just to survive, reduc-just to get something to eat for their families.” Highlighting the role of the media in perpetuating fear, she goes on,

I heard a woman call into the morning chat show Omorfos Kosmos to Proi (Beautiful World in the Morning) She was over eighty years old and said that she had no money due to her small pension Her husband was dead and she couldn’t claim his pension, she did not even have money to buy her tablets and medicines that the doctor prescribed She asked the doctor what she should

do and he told her it was her problem not his She didn’t have enough money

to give him a fakelaki (small envelop of money) Eventually the television senter promised to help her raise the money by sending it himself We cannot see the light, there seems no end to the devastation they are telling us (Eleni,

pre-51, Trikala)

At this point Eleni once again emphasized the role of corrupt politicians that would not be held accountable for “eating” the nation’s money She rightly noted that gasoline prices skyrocketed in Trikala due to the uncertainty sur-rounding the Troika bailout package, meaning that people resorted en masse

to bicycling around the town Indeed, in 2012, new cycle lanes were structed on the side of the main arteries in and out of town The mayor had given in to pressure to provide safer access for cyclists after a series of fatal accidents involving bicycles Eleni said, “People have dusted down their old bicycles and are leaving the cars at home It is like Trikala in the 1960s! If you just woke up today then you would think you had been transported back in time to 1965!” This point became even more striking when, in winter 2011, Trikalinoi resorted to burning illegally sourced wood and old furniture to heat their homes as petroleum heating became too expensive People again remarked that they were now living in Greece during the 1960s (Knight 2014a), while expressing disbelief that Greece had become “like Bulgaria or any another poor Balkan country.”

con-In 2010, Eleni said that she was “happy, at least, to have a job, so many people will lose theirs Young people will have no prospect of getting work,17

the students are better off staying in England, not returning to Greece Here, even those with work are not earning money now.” In 2012, Eleni lost her job as seven local schools were merged into one and she is now struggling

to survive on a reduced pension while providing for her two unemployed children in their 30s In 2010, she was “preparing for war.” In 2012, she felt

“defeated.”

May 2010 witnessed nationwide strikes with thousands of people taking

to the streets of urban centers to protest against Troika austerity Their anger was generally directed at the police, government buildings, banks, national media outlets, and multinational business chains, eventually resulting in

the death of three people in Athens (known as the Marfin deaths [Reuters, May 5, 2010, The Times, May 6, 2010, Kathimerini, May 6,

2010, and The Economist, May 6, 2010]).18 This was seen by many Trikalinoi as a new and unacceptable escalation of protests and there have been limited public demonstrations in the town since, despite protests continuing elsewhere in the country (see also Herzfeld

2011, Vradis and Dalakoglou 2011, Dalakoglou 2013, Dalakoglou

et al 2014, Theodossopoulos 2013) Life in Trikala since 2007 has been turbulent, with decades of economic prosperity giving way to unprecedented austerity The following chapters tell the tale of how inhabitants of a small Greek town come to terms with shifting socio-economic conditions

Chapter Overview

Primarily dealing with how Trikalinoi experience the twenty-first century Greek economic crisis in relation to past eras of social and economic turmoil, the following chapters capture the transition from prosperity to crisis Chapter 2 outlines the ethnographic setting for the study, offering a glimpse into the circumstances of research in Tri-kala and surrounding villages and introducing some of the key field-work settings In subsequent chapters the history of past events as presented in archival material and academic monographs is blended with local accounts of the period under discussion In Chapters 3 through 5, the historical background is presented, sometimes at length, in order to set the scene for ethnographic analysis of how past events inform present crisis experience These chapters are—perhaps ironically considering the argument of topological time—presented

in chronological order for the ease of cross analysis and to benefit the reader The selection of historical eras for discussion is based purely

on what my research participants prioritize in conversations about their experience of economic turmoil

Chapter 3 addresses how the breakdown of agricultural markets during the current crisis, coupled with diversification programs advocating renewable energy initiatives for impoverished farmers, has led to Trikalinoi feeling as though they no longer have control of their primary resource—land Narratives of Ottoman and Axis occu-pations are condensed to form a singularly meaningful account of suppression and dispossession as Trikalinoi express their distress over new Troika “landlords” (Tsiflikades) Chapter 4 extends the concept

of cultural proximity to recent embodiments of the Great Famine of

1941–43 The most prominent past event entwined with discourse about the Greek economic crisis, this case is especially interesting due to the multiple paths through which hunger has become proximate The chapter unpacks the role of institutionalized accounts of history in helping form the cultural proximity of events that originally had limited effect on the local area In Chapter 5, the argument of proximate moments of the past is inverted, pre-senting how the Greek Civil War (1946–49) is not part of current crisis dis-course Despite belonging to the same epoch of linear time, the civil war is not a proximate event on the Plain of Thessaly; but the story is quite different just a couple hours’ drive into the Pindos Mountains.

Chapter 6 picks up on a line running throughout the study and explores how food is used, both symbolically and physically, in protest against auster-ity Food is a recurring theme in how Trikalinoi experience crisis—from the belief that agricultural land is occupied, fears of famine, and feeling hun-gry, to protest slogans, changing consumption patterns, and hunger cited in suicide notes Drawing on events including the 1973 Polytechnic uprising against military dictatorship and public suicides during the 1999–2000 stock market crash, the chapter presents polytemporal slogans that draw on meta-phors of food in diverse protest situations

Chapters 7 and 8 focus on how the economic crisis is experienced in the public domain in Trikala, taking as their starting point the perceptions of many northern Europeans that everyday Greeks have not done enough to curb spending on “luxury” items, such as cars, clothes, and vacations Both chapters include ethnographic snippets from before and after the onset of austerity Chapter 7 provides ethnographic detail to the continued practice

of “gathering outside” to socialize on the central streets of Trikala, public displays that cultivate collective suffering and solidarity The next chapter explores how displays of status remain important to Trikalinoi but on altered terms of consumption The chapter identifies the historical roots of status competition, while highlighting how some businesses have accommodated continued demands for competitive consumption In all cases, the central role of the past in shaping Trikalinoi experience of contemporary crisis is striking

Ethnography on the Plain of Thessaly

The majority of ethnographic material for this study was collected

dur-ing an 18-month fieldwork period from November 2007 to April

2009 However, my affiliation to Trikala dates back to 2003 when a Greek colleague introduced me to the region as a summer retreat Since my long-term research visit I have returned to the town for an average of three months per year In 2009, with economic crisis palpably in the air, I lived in Trikala for a further two months, returning for Easter, Christmas, and sum-mer fieldtrips ever since

Trikala is situated in the west of the periphery of Thessaly1 in central mainland Greece.2 With an official population of 51,862 (2001 census), the town is located on the vast agricultural Plain of Thessaly Hemmed in by the Chasia and Kamvonia Mountains to the north, the Olympus range to the northeast, the Pindos Mountains to the west, and the Ossa and Pelion mountains to the southeast, the plain experiences hot, dry summers with temperatures regularly lingering around 45 degrees Celsius for months on end In the cold, dry winters temperatures have been known to drop as low

as minus 25 degrees Celsius

Thessaly was incorporated into the Greek state from the Ottoman Empire

in 1881 and now borders the peripheries of West and Central Macedonia, Sterea Ellada, and Epirus, with the Aegean Sea forming the eastern frontier Due to the size of the agricultural plain, Thessaly is often referred to as “the bread basket of Greece” and supplies much of the nation’s home-grown corn, maize, and barley For this reason the region has been deemed “the major growth zone of the country” (Bennison 1977:6) due to its strategic position halfway between the political and economic powerhouse of Athens to the south and the industrial port city of Thessaloniki to the north Due to techno-logical advances in flood control and the enhancement of the regional trans-port infrastructure, this is a label that has stuck since the 1970s, although without fruition Recent developments such as the new Trikala–Larisa dual

carriageway and the Ioannina–Kozani–Thessaloniki national motorway ise to further link western Thessaly to the ports of Thessaloniki and Igoumen-itsa, with their lucrative Balkan trade routes and profitable tourist industries.Trikala is one of four urban centers in Thessaly3 and the seat of one of the four prefectures The town is situated on the River Litheos, four hours’ drive (327 km) northwest of Athens and three hours (249 km) southwest of Thes-saloniki The settlement dates back to Classical times when it was known by the name Trikki, regularly referenced in the work of Homer Remnants of an ancient sanctuary dedicated to the physician-god Asklepios are located near the center of the modern town This was once the site of a “healing center” dedicated to Asklepios and is widely considered the oldest Aesculpadium in Greece An ancient acropolis is situated on a small hill overlooking the old town (known as Varousi) upon which stands a substantial Byzantine fortress

prom-Figure 1 The location of Thessaly periphery (shaded) and the town of Trikala.

that dominates the skyline In the east of the town stands the Ottoman Kursum Tzami, a sixteenth century mosque restored in the mid-1990s with European Union funding and the only work of the great Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan to be found on Greek soil (Hellander 2006).4

Figure 2 The four prefectures of Thessaly and their principal urban centers (as of 2010).

Figure 3 Trikala prefecture The research for this book was conducted within the “golden

triangle” between Trikala, Kalampaka, and Pyli.

The first signs of life in the vicinity of Trikala date back to Neolithic times, with numerous settlements dating to 6000 BCE The ancient city of Trikki was founded around 3000 BCE and was purportedly named after the nymph

of the same name During one of our leisurely meetings over tsipouro and meze, local historian Giannis Ioannidis told me that the city was of “high

importance in antiquity” and became the capital of the State of Estaiotidas before falling to the Persians in 480 BCE In 352 BCE, Philip of Mace-don united Thessaly with the Kingdom of Macedonia After a brief Roman occupation at the turn of the millennium, Trikala experienced the rule of numerous prospectors, including the Goths, Huns, Slavs, Bulgars, Normans, Catalans, and Byzantines, before finally being incorporated into the Ottoman Empire in 1393 In 1779, the town was recorded as being home to twelve thousand people consisting “of more Turks than Greeks,” although the Greeks governed the city with their own money and had the power to appoint and dismiss Turkish administrators as they pleased (Katsogiannos 1992:9, 22)

Trikala: A Town of Contrasts

As my good friend Petros, a middle-aged local farmer whose family has worked the land 5 km outside of Trikala since migrating from the Pindos

Figure 4 Greek Orthodox Church of Agios Konstantinos with the Ottoman Kursum Tzami

in the background.

Mountains during the late 1800s, says, Trikala is “hard to classify it is

a town of contrasts, the largest urban settlement on the plain where people want to be seen to be European and modern, yet utterly reliant on traditional agriculture without farming the town would not exist.” The array of small agricultural villages situated within 20 kilometers of Trikala all consist of between one hundred and eight hundred residents.5 The town acts as a com-mercial hub, as the location for weekly markets, transport links, national and multinational chain stores, banks, and other business amenities However, Trikala cannot be classified as urban in the same way as Athens, Thessaloniki,

or even Larisa (the largest town in Thessaly, situated 65 kilometers to the east) The economic interdependency between town and village is remark-able, Petros notes that

on the central street (of Trikala) you can see familiar faces from ten different villages—agriculturalists that have come in to the market to sell their produce,

or stock-up on fertilizer and animal feed, and have decided to have a coffee or get their hair cut at the same time The person cutting their hair may be a fel-low villager whose father is working the fields The side streets are lined with pick-up trucks and the buses are packed on market days (Petros, 53, Trikala)

Trikala is noticeably detached from other urban centers, having only two direct trains a day to Thessaloniki, over three hours away, and another three trains to Athens, a journey of some five hours Thus Trikala is a distinctly rural urban center—or an urban center with a distinctly rural flair.6 As it happens, this study reflects the rural–urban dynamic in many ways As well

as discussing the impact of historical events that helped shape rary rural–urban socioeconomic relations—such as the breakup of tsiflikia

contempo-(landed estates) and forced rural–urban migration—for the duration of my field research I resided in the village of Livadi, four kilometers from the cen-ter of Trikala The family with whom I lived exemplified the rural–urban relationship, with members commuting to the town for work, to attend the market and partake in retail therapy

The central commercial street of Trikala, Asklipiou, is lined with cafeterias-come-bars and high-rent commercial outlets Asklipiou is also the location for many of the most highly respected medical practices in the town, situated high on the fourth and fifth floors of 1960s apartment blocks at the southern end of the main street Asklipiou is considered the social and economic heart of the town, although the official central square is located a five-minute walk away past the statue of Stefanos Sarafis and across a bridge over the river Litheos Commercial activity on Asklipiou has become the barometer for gauging the impact of economic crisis on the local community

As one informant put it, “No shopping bags, unemployed youth in cafeterias,

businesses closing down and someone trying to make one glass of ouzo last all day; Asklipiou shows us the scars of crisis.”

In terms of transport amenities, Trikala is on a secondary train line that continues north as far as Kalampaka, and an intercity bus station (KTEL) with numerous reliable daily services to towns across mainland Greece The three main roads connect Trikala with Larisa to the east, Karditsa to the south, and Kalampaka (and then on to Ioannina or Grevena) to the northwest The town is home to what is generally acknowledged to be the worst general hospital in the Balkans (an issue confirmed by hospital doctors and my own personal experiences), a fifteen thousand capacity sports stadium—for a foot-ball team that has recently been refounded after a series of messy corruption scandals—three major hotels, and branches of all major national but no for-eign banks There are two multinational supermarket chains situated in the town, one situated in the center and one that has two stores on the periphery Other commercial amenities of interest include travel agents, which in 2007 were offering package deals to such exotic destinations as Java and Barbados, five Internet cafes, and the store that has colonized every Greek provincial town—Marks and Spencer

The central streets are a blend of national and local fast food outlets, national and multinational chain stores such as Zara, Alexi Andriotti, Ben-etton, Sephora, and Hondos Center, and innumerable cafeteria-come-bars The capillary streets, although only a few minutes’ walk from Asklipiou, are

a combination of small privately owned businesses such as hairdressers, travel agencies, and book shops All have been affected in different ways by the economic crisis Above these outlets are three to eight stories of two- or three-bedroom residential flats with balconies overlooking the rooftops of the town center with views away toward Kalampaka and the UNESCO World Heri-tage Site of Meteora, or south toward the mountains towering above Pyli.Off the central square two opposing avenues are the scenes of alternative social and economic activities To the northwest there is the Old Town with its assortment of intimate restaurants with typically Greek menus and small privately owned specialty shops such as a picture framer and professional photographers To the southeast the streets widen to open onto what every Monday morning becomes the bustling local market Many villagers take the early bus to frequent the Monday market in Trikala, both to purchase and sell goods.7

On the outskirts of the town, but still only a ten-minute walk from the center, are the residential neighborhoods The odd lonesome Ottoman relic with its distinctive rusty colored stone walls and ramshackle tiled roof can

be observed sandwiched between concrete new-builds and 1960s apartment

blocks The houses have little uniformity and thus the internal dimensions vary greatly Often houses are divided into apartments as parents pass down property to their children as part of their dowry or inheritance Many houses were built by internal migrants themselves after the civil war, while others are more recent, having been constructed as a result of capital investment during the economically prosperous years of the 1990s Such an irregularity in style creates a unique atmosphere with each building bringing its own distinct character to the neighborhood, each with a story to tell.

Spaces of Socialization

The main space for socialization in Trikala is the seven hundred meter long Asklipiou, built in the 1890s and partially pedestrianized in 1932.8 The street was established at the beginning of the twentieth century as the par-excellence place of the volta—a leisurely stroll with the point of seeing and

being seen The volta on Asklipiou remains an important part of social life to

this day The gradual increase in economic prosperity, the augmentation of the population, and female emancipation turned Asklipiou into the central place for bride-picking (nyfopazaro) My landlady, Eugenia, in her mid-60s,

says that until the 1970s, Sunday-best clothes were tailored for the dual pose of church and the volta on Asklipiou, as were the female high heels and

pur-the male black suits “Asklipiou was not only pur-the place of pur-the volta for the

Tri-kalinoi, but also for people from the surrounding villages Women often had the courage to stroll continuously for two to three hours looking for a partner until their feet became blistered” (cf Katsogiannos 2000:214–215) She goes on to say that young people today “continue to employ Asklipiou for the volta” parading themselves in front of “members of the opposite sex,

flirting, showing off their affluence, their success and, now, their resilience to economic crisis.”

Even since the onset of austerity, townspeople and villagers come to Asklipiou adorned in the latest fashions, sporting the must-have sunglasses, designer jackets, and handbags Teenage youths and middle-aged profes-sionals alike display themselves in high heels and short skirts or with leather jackets and flashy watches It is the favorite space for people of all ages to sit back, frappe in hand, and look the part Asklipiou still operates as the center

for young men and women to watch each other and socialize Due to the dual purpose of the cafeterias-come-bars, this is now a twenty-four hour a day practice Vaggelis, a 44-year-old local pharmacist with a particular dislike for Asklipiou, notes that “it is impossible to walk the length of the street at any hour without physically feeling the eyes peering at you across the empty

beer bottles and coffee cups.” There is an ostensibly obvious status tion and a “tournament of consumerism” taking place as people continue to frequent Asklipiou during the crisis, demonstrating their defiance of auster-ity and showing that historically embedded social practices do not disappear overnight (Knight 2015a).

competi-The continued participation in competitive consumption and activities such as drinking coffee and taking vacations has perplexed northern Euro-pean enforcers of Troika austerity (Pryce 2012) My northern European friend claims that the streets of Trikala provide the “evidence” of a headstrong attitude, “Watching people in cafeterias, bars or at the beach just goes to show that Greeks continue to spend too much money on coffee, nice clothes and holidays they cannot truly pretend to be victims of austerity.” In Trikala, Apostolis, 29 and unemployed, believes that the continuation of con-sumption practices on Asklipiou is a glorious celebration of Greek resilience

to crisis, “however much they (Troika) try to destroy our lives with austerity and taxation, we can prove that we are resilient and will not be beaten Greeks will continue to enjoy life and Asklipiou is our stage.” Although perhaps not consistent with the expectations of Troika economists, the social value placed

on public appearance and commensality cannot simply disappear (Knight 2015a, Pipyrou 2014b) Despite a radical decrease in expendable income,

in Trikala people continue to participate in status competition through sumption and persist in culturally significant activities such as the so-called café culture However, all may not be as it seems and crisis as represented in the public domain is the topic of later chapters

con-Asklipiou has also become a metaphorical gauge for local social and economic stereotyping The street can be employed negatively in daily dis-course to denote a person that has nothing better to do than sit around drinking coffee all day attempting to appear “cool” by exhibiting themselves and their wealth This is especially true when applied to villagers that visit Trikala with the sole intention of sitting at a cafeteria on Asklipiou During

my time in Trikala the occasions were numerous when a conversation would involve the derogatory phrases “they don’t want to find a job, they would rather sit on Asklipiou”; “the students finish university and spend their par-ents’ money in the cafeterias of Asklipiou They are sat there in the morning and return during the night”; “they are the type of people that incorporate visiting their father in hospital with a trip to Asklipiou to drink their little cup of coffee”; “he spent his money on designer clothes to go and chat up the girls on Asklipiou, now he is broke”; “I am sure he can find the time

to do some voltes (plural of volta) on Asklipiou, that is where he seems to

live”; and “the villagers (employed derogatively) all sit on Asklipiou, they are

so cheap.”