Desolated Spaces, Violated Bodies: Narrating Violent Encounters in the Historic Center of Athens

This presentation focuses on the rise of criminality and violence in the historic center of Athens. This is an ethnographically informed paper based on the narrations of local residents as well as on my personal account of a violent incident. I will view violence as an organising element of the everyday life of people in this area. In this process, I will focus on the ways different groups of people internalise violent behaviour and the mechanisms they invent to cope with it whether the “threat” is real or perceived. The increase of violence and fear in the historic center is viewed in relation to shifting Greek realities and the interconnection of local processes with national and international events and affairs. These changes and processes lead to the radicalization of social and political structures providing the context for violent behavior and intolerance. The historic center of Athens constitutes a cultural, economic and political significant space in the urban web, reflecting and exposing the intricacies of social life and the political failures of Greek modernity.  The recent crisis in Greece and the rest of Europe renders this situation all the more acute and increasingly subject to precarity.