The Unfamiliar (E-Journal)
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FROM STREET DANCES AND \u27BREAKING\u27 TO NIGHT CLUBBING: POPULAR ENTERTAINMENT AS CULTURAL AND SYMBOLIC CAPITAL IN CONTEMPORARY ATHENS
No full textThis paper is an anthropological portrayal of two cultural forms of popular entertainment, with a central emphasis on their dance practices: hip hop dance styles and night clubbing. Their main components are discussed in relation to emotions, materials and regulatory language and how these surround the sense of authenticity of the self, grounding the notion of the popular. Breakdance, street dances of the Athens hip hop scene and night clubbing practices in the western suburbs of Athens unravel in a descriptive manner in order to illuminate their interwoven elements in terms of authenticity and the permutations of the popular. The cultural and symbolic agendas of the subjectivities and collectivities engaged in these popular cultural forms unveil, along with the ways global and local discourses intersect, to produce a territory for identity formation. By highlighting the key aspects of popular entertainment in contemporary Greece, the aim of this article is to contribute to the anthropological study of popular culture by pointing out its role in the processes of shaping and performing subjectivity and in the production of authenticity.
THE FALL OF THE \u27PURIFIED\u27 COMMUNITY: CRISIS, TRANSFORMATION & COLLECTIVE ACTION IN GREECE
No full textThe article explores the recent social and political transformations in Greece through events of collective action in the public space of Athens. Drawing on Richard Sennet’s notion of the ‘myth of the purified community’ it is argued that these events demonstrate a gradual disintegration of the social imaginary of the idea of community in various scales (national, local, etc). This argument builds on the indistinction between public and private as reflected in these events in Athens. By providing ethnographic examples from both before and after the economic collapse, the article explains crisis as a long process of contesting the sovereignty of the state and institutions in Greece and how these previously downplayed contestations were rendered visible in the Greek public sphere. This visibility shakes the foundations of the notion of a homogeneous community as it is established by the ‘social contract’
DWELLINGS
Get PDFThe depicted semi-permanent structures, made from natural wood and scavenged materials, are home to an increasing population of young and not-so-young men and women. These particular dwellings are situated in the River Avon Valley in North East Somerset, on private land between the river, railway line and canal. Without planning permission and consent, these dwellings are a stone’s throw from the circuits of capitalist economy – the Georgian splendor and affluence of the City of Bath, a World Heritage Site. They serve as very vulnerable shelters for those with no means of support, who are often blighted by health problems, drug and alcohol dependence, and mental illness
THE CONDITION OF CRISIS AND THE SYMPTOMS OF SOCIAL CHANGE: FIVE FLIGHTS OF THOUGHT ON THE POST OF THE GREEK POST-POLITY ERA
No full textIt is a well-known fact that Greece faces one of the most precarious and transformative periods of its modern history. Greek society has come to learn, in a baleful manner, that crisis is the sequence of its former political inefficiencies and a slump that must be overcome. The pressure of this awareness leads people to deface previously established social convictions about the self and the world. In this procedure, social and mass media articulate and (re)produce discourses from above, below and the past so to capitalize the present for a new and solid horizon for the future. This article challenges five beliefs that circulate in the Greek public sphere, inculcating in the collective consciousness their incontrovertible realities. The end of Post-Polity era (the “former” political status quo of Greece), the revival of ethno-socialist movements, the debt crisis of eurozone countries, youth\u27s stand for social change and the role of Greece in this global financial turmoil comprise the contents of this critical debate; one that aims to make sense of what social change feels like in the context of the current global crisis
