Crisis and Collective Action in Greece: Continuity and Change

Ever since the transition of Greece from an authoritarian regime to democracy (1974), the country was attributed in both official political and popular discourses the position of a Southern peripheral society, always lagging behind advanced Western democracies. When the financial crisis erupted (2010), the dominant interpretation told the story of a crisis that was to be expected from a country with strong legacies of a backward political culture that did not modernise.   

At the same time, the urban riots of 2008 and the intensification of contention that followed the eruption of the crisis (2010-2012) brought the country to the forefront transforming it into a prototype for contentious politics. New modes of activism, grass roots solidarity and rhetorics of protest broke with conventional and ‘legitimate’ forms of politicization and claims making. This critique was further enhanced by the outbreak of a series of protests around the world.

How did media coverage, academic analysis, official political discourses and civil society representatives deal with a series of protest movements that marked the country during the last few years? The paper sheds some light on the ways state-society relationships and the role of Greece within Europe have been renegotiated during the crisis years, both in theory and in practice. In order to explore the degree in which domestic politics have been affected by the involvement of large parts of the populace into social mobilizations, it is crucial to trace the possible reconceptualizations of mainstream discourses on resistance and social change over time.