“NEW” GREEK SOLIDARITIES (ALLILEGGIÍ) Communalism vis-à-vis Food in Crisis

James Verinis, Roger Williams University, Bristol (USA)

In this paper I extend the anthropological analyses of “new” solidarity (allileggií) networks or movements in Greece to rural regions and agricultural life as well as new groups of people. Food networks such as the “ movement”, which facilitates the direct sales of agricultural produce, reveals rural aspects of networks that are thought to be simply urban phenomena. “Social kitch- ens” are revealed to be humanistic as well as nationalistic, bringing refugees, economic migrants, and together in arguably unprecedented ways. Through a review of such food solidarity movements – their rural or urban boundaries as well as their egalitarian or multicultural tenets – I consider whether they are thus more than mere extensions of earlier patterns of social solidarity identified in the anthropological record.

Keywords: solidarity, rural–urban dichotomy, ethno-national identity, globalization, food

“New” Greek Solidarity Movements well as the seemingly paradoxical evidence I had col- When I first began to reflect on the work I had con- lected during my dissertation fieldwork – that many ducted for my Ph.D. dissertation between 2008 and bonds between Greeks and non-Greeks in rural ar- 20101 in the southern Peloponnesian prefecture of eas had strengthened since the early 1990s.3 What is (which was primarily about Greek/non- more, to say that economic migrants are not simply Greek farmer relationships [Verinis 2015]), I sought exploited by neoliberalism is generally anathema to to account for some statistical evidence that many anthropology, despite its interest in data niches vis- non-Greeks had left Greece since the onset of the fi- à-vis qualitative approaches such as my focus on a nancial crisis.2 Mainstream media has focused heav- certain relatively small group of economic immi- ily on the rise of support for the Greek far right, par- grants. Nonetheless, inspired by the unprecedented ticularly the now infamous neofascist party Chryssí achievements and future visions of certain Albani- Avgí, or Golden Dawn, whose members have been ans, Moldovans, Ukrainians, Romanians, Bulgar- responsible for all sorts of brutal and illegal acts ians as well as farmers of other South-Eastern/East- against individuals they deem unworthy of Greek ern European/Balkan ethno-nationalities whom I identity. This data and media focus has somewhat have had experiences working with in Greece, I re- overshadowed interest in solidarity movements as mained convinced that certain forms of co-ethnic

James Verinis 2018: “New” Greek Food Solidarities (Allileggií). Communalism vis-à-vis Food in Crisis Greece. ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 99 Ethnologia Europaea 48:1, 99–115. © Museum Tusculanum Press. rapprochement continue to grow roots in the coun- institutions and thus, to varying degrees, unobserv- try despite or perhaps because of the phenomena we able. As Castells, Caraça and Cardoso (2012) have call the financial crisis and austerity. I visited former pointed out, these “networked movements” lack an fieldwork sites and interlocutors in 2016 in order to organizational structure and are characterized by a determine if this was true. lesser degree of identification and fluid membership. I had not yet begun to consider whether this rap- Right-wing affiliations are typically not repre- prochement was a new form of solidarity per se. Yet sented in these movements; however, one can cer- one increasingly interesting line of inquiry in re- tainly find solidarity initiatives of other kinds, such cent scholarship on Greece is in fact concerned with as those less inclusive networks supported by Golden new forms of sociality and communalism emerging Dawn or the . Members of there, often between supposedly disparate groups Golden Dawn set up their own “Greek only” of people in their joint attempt to survive socio- , for example. Yet the solidarity movements economic tumult. Consequently I have begun to see in Greece I refer to provide an array of people with much of my former work in this light. such essentials as medicine, health care, legal aid, This special issue on resistance and change in food products and prepared . The “no middle- Mediterranean has asked contributors to man movement” or “potato movement” (kínima tis consider the roles that persistent cultural patterns patátes), which facilitates the direct sales of agricul- (Schönberger 2015) – such as those involving infor- tural produce, and solidarity health clinics are two mal networks, family relationships and friendship- such prominent movements or networks (Arampat- based coalitions – play in the formation of new col- zi 2016; Cabot 2015, 2016; Rakopoulos 2014, 2016a, laborative communities. Works by John Campbell 2016b). Heath Cabot’s account (2016) is noteworthy (1964), Evthymios Papataxiarchis (1991), Juliet du for her discussion of the involvement of non-Greeks Boulay (1991), Michael Herzfeld (1992) and others in certain health clinics. In chronicling their active who created the first ethnographic record of Greece participation, Cabot describes non-Greeks as “deep- highlight the historical particulars of friendship, ly marginalized”. Presumably she means that this sociality, and communalism in the country as ba- is the case outside of solidarity economies, as these sic processes we often still refer to when we speak of older South-Eastern/Eastern European/Balkan mi- Greek national or cultural identity. Recent solidarity grants, as well as more recent migrants from Africa, movements, or kínisi allilegií, certainly build upon South Asia, and the Middle East are arguably in persistent cultural patterns or past relationships more horizontal relationships with fellow care seek- between the state and its citizenry. Yet, most con- ers, if not also with care workers, within new solidar- temporary Greek solidarity movements are forms of ity health clinic contexts (2016: 153). Notable also resistance to current, dominant, neoliberal political is the fact that one of the two clinics Cabot worked and economic structures in Europe and thus novel with had an even distribution of care seekers – half in this sense at least. of Greek and half of non-Greek origin. Petros, an Kínisi allilegií may not seem ideologically familiar Albanian care seeker in this clinic, stands outside of either. Greek “solidarians” are a mix of anarchists, neighborhood supermarkets every weekend collect- communists, supporters of the current coalition led ing food for others in need. In this capacity Petros is by center left Syriza, urban globalists, the apoliti- arguably also a care provider. In all, this somewhat cal, and conservative ruralites as well. Scholars de- upended hierarchy or orientation to conventional bate whether solidarity initiatives are the offspring understandings of marginalization and mutual aid of previous leftist political movements or whether is a crucial point that the study of food exchange (as they are wholly new (Cabot 2015). Some confusion well as new exchanges of other necessities of life) can is due to the fact that contemporary kínisi allilegií make as part of an evaluation of “new” solidarities. are largely unofficial, as opposed to conventional Food in particular engenders certain behavioral

100 ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 transgressions as well as holistic scholarly analysis, vation on sloping land), and an aging population, drawing together exclusive spaces such as the “ur- amongst other pushing and pulling variables, cheap ban” and “rural”, discrete ethnic groups, as well as and flexible labor finds its place. Yet immigrant in- the Global South and the Global North, as refugee corporation develops in certain instances and not al- food aid initiatives in Greece (a developed country ways in the same manner as elsewhere. Non-Greeks with its own food crisis) have begun to show us. were in the process of becoming far more integral I have found these, as well as other scholarly ac- to rural Laconian communities in the early 2000s counts of emerging solidarity networks or move- than as sources of cheap labor, as I will continue to ments essential to my reevaluation of co-ethnic describe. In crisis Greece, food and agriculture have rapprochement in rural areas. I suggest that rural regained significance and it is little wonder that in co-ethnic cooperation and these movements have becoming integral to the survival of small-scale more than a few things to do with one another. agricultural practices and traditional rural values, Small-scale agriculture, family farms, the commu- non-Greeks should be found at the heart of a variety nalism of the Greek village, or horió, and the quality of new Greek solidarity movements as well. It is also of rural life have become quite symbolic in light of unsurprising that scholars have been led to consider the financial crisis. Largely unprecedented collabo- kínisi allilegií that place food at the core of their ideo- rations in urban areas such as , , and logical stances. It is for these reasons that I sought aimed at safeguarding the most exis- to revisit old topics and interlocutors, as well as new tential components of life rely quite heavily on these food sites such as those I have begun to describe here rural, traditional, historical, and ideological foun- – so as to continue to illuminate the myriad socio- dations. Novel networks that produce food and save economic roles immigrants play in Greece and draw and exchange seeds in traditional manners or with a portrait of some new roles food is now playing in alternative ideological foundations have formed Greek society. as resistant responses to neoliberal campaigns that Solidarity food markets, solidarity food grower intensify and commodify agriculture. They resist networks, social kitchens (koinonikés kouzínes), global agribusiness and financial austerity measures seed banks and exchange networks, food rescue that have threatened family farms with extinction. movements, along with what I term “rural solidar- Food networks – those interested in safeguarding ity networks”, make up this current reflection on biodiversity and small-scale production as well as Greek ethno-national identity. Identity, resistance, direct channels of distribution and affordable access and change vis-à-vis food is surely not a new idea, as to meals – can be considered a certain category of articles such as Sutton et al. (2013) attest – regard- networks or collaborations. While Greece has only ing the relationships between food and contempo- recently become a country of immigration, the in- rary protest movements during Egypt’s Arab Spring, volvement of non-Greeks makes these collabora- New York’s Occupy Wall Street, and in Greece at the tions arguably more egalitarian than their compa- outset of the current financial crisis for example. Yet rable predecessors as well. They certainly are more what, specifically, it is that food movements and net- egalitarian than those political and economic forces works provide residents with in order so that they they claim to resist. now transgress conventional or traditional social In my research on Greek ethno-national identity and spatial divides in Greece remains largely unac- and the incorporation of post-socialist immigrants counted for. into various components of Greek life in the early 2000s, I was led to study immigrant incorporation Rurality, Cities, and Solidarity into economies in particular. As happens in To begin linking these movements or networks, I countries with relatively poor neighbors, a reliance will briefly reiterate the current state of shifting af- on labor-intensive industries (such as olive culti- fairs between urban and rural in Greece. Of ,

ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 101 urban Greece (Athens and Thessaloniki primarily) As with the ecology of urban neighborhoods has been the hardest hit by austerity and the con- as proposed by the School (Park & Miller sequent loss of wages and pensions. The rate of un- 1921, in Glick-Schiller 2008), life in now global employment is markedly worse there. The degrada- Greek countrysides involves certain new ecologi- tion of the traditional safety nets of the family and cal and migratory patterns that solidarity networks the ancestral farm compounded by new medical, are enab­ling people to create. These new patterns legal, and educational needs in the contemporary between rural and urban places as well as between “developed” urban world makes surviving the crisis Greeks and new immigrants take symbolic as well in these cities more difficult than in rural Greek ar- as material form. As Cabot says (2016: 161), “There eas. Consequently, Athina Arampatzi (2016) rightly is more to explore here in terms of urban and rural speaks of specifically “urban” solidarity spaces aspects of memory and the question of what gener- where the exchange of essential goods takes place. ates ‘political’ consciousness.” We were tactfully re- Yet Chaia Heller’s work on the Conféderation Pay- minded of the complementarity of rural and urban sanne (2013), one of ’s largest farmers’ unions, aspects of Greek solidarity in 2011 when communist for example, encourages us to focus on solidarity party MP Liana Kaneli brought a loaf of and a food movements from the perspective of rural pro- bottle of milk into a parliament meeting to decry the ducers as well. In doing so we might look to evidence austerity-driven food insecurity that Greeks were in support of a new “back to the land” movement suffering from. The ethics and values now espoused in Greece (Al Jazeera 2012; Cockburn 2011; Dona- by “new” food movements thought to primarily exist dio 2012; Kasimis & Zografakis 2012; Verinis 2015). in urban areas are increasingly echoed by ruralites We should consider the fact that the crisis benefits (both Greek and non-Greek) in response to patents laikés – traditional open-air food markets – as op- on genes and seeds, bureaucratic and corporate hur- posed to comparably more expensive supermarkets dles surrounding organic certification, international or more generally encourages people to reinvest in corruption, and global price competition. rural Greek agriculture. We should consider rever- There is state and EU support for a small percent- sions to traditional rural Greek menus in Athenian age of traditional small-scale farms, yet the vast ma- restaurants (Kochilas 2010) and on traditional Greek jority of Greek farming families are struggling to television shows (Sutton 2014), and the eth- survive.4 Dutch rural sociologist Jan van der Ploeg ical ramifications such a turn implies. In doing so, is one rather clear voice on this; “[Food] empires we become more interdisciplinary and nuanced in proceed as a brutal ecological and socio-economic our approach to contemporary Greek ethnic iden- exploitation, if not degradation of nature, farmers, tities or moral economies (Scott 1977; Thompson food and culture” (2008: 14). This kind of reaction 1971). More specifically, we comprehend how the to global agribusiness also emerges amongst what rural experiences crisis itself as well as how it is sym- we might call a global Greek peasantry in new food bolized in more urban areas (Angelopoulos 2016). solidarity patterns. As Greek residents weigh new Nikos, one of the Greek olive farmers I worked with shared threats, to food security perhaps most nota- in Laconia, insisted in 2009 that his son Spiros, then bly, new social movements now inspire rural and ur- nine years old, would do anything except farm ol- ban Greeks to cut across spatial and other domains ives as he grew older. Now seventeen and subject to of their lives. Social kitchens are one such manifesta- new employment constraints as well as certain other tion of the inspiration to do so. reevaluations of the rural, Spiros plans to attend university to study agronomy and farm the olive Social Kitchens fields that he has inherited from his grandparents. Koinonikés or syllogikés kouzínes, ‘social’ or ‘collec- Repeasantization is now seen as a way through – if tive kitchens’, have only recently emerged in Greece. not also out of – the crisis. They have developed in response to the contempo-

102 ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 rary financial crisis as well as to the more hierarchi- Food Rescue and Laikés cal models of “soup kitchens” (Papataxiarchis 2016: Variations of “to whom” or “for whom” were re- 208). Immigrants, the homeless, the unemployed, sponses I often heard from vendors at neighbor- the poor, and most recently refugees share food with hood food markets or laikés when, as a volunteer one another in these places. The slogan for El for Boroúme (“We Can”, a non-profit organization collective in Athens is “we cook collectively, working to reduce food waste and combat malnutri- we serve solidarity.” Interestingly, the inspiration tion in Greece), I would ask if they had any portions for El Chef, one of the first social kitchens, begun of their produce to offer as a donation – kamía me- in 2007, was to enact solidarity with migrants before rítha fagytó xaméni. Some vendors are indeed con- the economic recession truly set in, which then en- cerned that no refugees should receive food while couraged them to extend their network to include Greeks remain hungry. While Boroúme does not Greeks as well. discriminate, they do selectively reveal information Konstantinos Polychronopoulos, the founder of so as to maintain relationships with participating another prominent kitchen, O Állos Anthrópos, ‘the vendors. While much of the produce Boroúme col- other person’ or ‘fellow man’, describes what distin- lects does go to church soup kitchens and boarding guishes social kitchens from soup kitchens; “They houses for the primarily Greek mentally ill, sur- took [the sandwiches] only when they saw that I also plus often goes to refugee charities now as well. Of ate one. There was mistrust in the beginning. And course, when social scientists like myself or the film I got into their shoes… I wouldn’t receive food if I crew from the Austrian organization Wastecooking, hadn’t seen how it was made, too. So I started pre- who filmed Boroúme at markets in June 2016, in- paring food on the street” (Wanshel 2016). quire in private about the different groups of people As their slogans attest, social kitchens are indeed who might benefit from such food rescue endeavors, “open to all”. I was free to eat and socialize with Boroúme is quick to point to all of them. whomever I chose whenever I had the opportunity Resentment of EU austerity packages and the to attend social kitchen meals. As I observed the go- political presentation of them as “generous” has ings on around the social kitchen O Állos Anthrópos only furthered Greek distrust of any formal policy in Monastiraki Square in central Athens one after- measures and emboldened ideological beliefs that noon in the summer of 2016, I realized that part of preface solidarity activities as modes of sharing as what social kitchens signify is a lack of boundaries. opposed to giving, especially systematized giving. For much of the time, I could not tell whether I was One afternoon, while the Wastecooking film crew in the social kitchen or not. On that day, a home- was filming, a vendor asked me what they were do- less Greek man sitting next to me, presumably ing. He protested against my explanation that they there to partake of the social kitchen, began to beg were documenting the need to combat hunger and for some beer from a well-dressed Pakistani man malnutrition in Greece, insisting rather that he and sitting across from him who was there on a work his Indian co-worker were not hungry; “We’re not break. A second Greek man, also well-dressed and hungry here in Greece. We are mánges!” (Then pí- also drinking beer then asked where the Pakistani name ethó stin Ellátha, eímaste mánges!). A mán- man was from. At the close of a short exchange, the gas is a “player”, someone with swagger, ego, and second Greek man contributed his own beer to the particular Greek pride in working-class values. The mix as the three toasted to each other’s good health vendor then asked his Indian co-worker if he was – “stin yiá mas”. Where is the “real” social kitchen? hungry and, with the same obstinate and tradi- In any case, there is something postmodern, if not tional Greek thrust of the chin to indicate no, the entirely novel, in relation to the anthropological re- Indian man confirmed that he was indeed not.5 In cord about certain phenomena emerging in as well this exchange the vendor drew a line around him- as around social kitchens. self and his Indian co-worker, setting Greek resi-

ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 103 dents apart from those who need charity as well as ridis told me, a “meeting ground” between the ur- apart from the Austrian filmmakers, seen by him ban and the rural. as representative of Northern/Central Europe and As ideological lines become drawn out and con- the Troika (the International Monetary Fund, the templated in the process of sharing food, in certain European Financial Stability Facility, and the Eu- “seams of empire” (Tsing 2012) such as Greece, rela- ropean Commission) or the Troikanoi (Troikians) tively unprecedented alliances form. Existential cri- – the “real” foreigners. ses have certainly helped social kitchens, food rescue Another vendor performed a similarly defiant operations, and solidarity food markets (to which I reaction to the film crew’s presence on another oc- now move) emerge quite suddenly in Greece. What casion, insisting that food rescue volunteers (in- new thinking or discourses about food and solidar- cluding me) “take more bags,” shouting “Take it! ity, in light of the various tears in traditional Greek Everything’s free in Greece!” As we struggled to safety nets, have enabled these charitable organiza- carry all of the food he was so “graciously” offering tions as well as others more focused on sharing econ- us, he tactfully shamed us into looking like thieves omies – various new manifestations of civil society – just another group of people taking advantage of – to operate? Greece’s excellent and cheap agricultural produce as well as its image of a nation that has so poorly man- Solidarity Food Markets aged its own resources and finances that it is up to Solidarity food market initiatives in Greece, also the , bankers, and charitable organ- known collectively as “the potato movement” or izations to solve hunger there.6 “no middleman movement”, make direct attempts Of course Boroúme is not so simplistic an or- to exclude middlemen (mesázontes) and merchants ganization as such reactions to their activities might (hondrempóroi) who buy wholesale and then sell to lead us to believe. Along with a host of other initia- individual food stores and chains in urban areas. tives, their “Gleaning Program” or Sto Xoráfi (‘In the They preface direct sales of agricultural produce to Field’) brings volunteers to rural/agricultural areas benefit small-scale, socio-economically threatened serving Athens in order to help reduce food waste farmers as well as financially impotent urban and at the level of the farms and allow these urbanites to peri-urban consumers. better understand food production regimes. Advo- These initiatives originated primarily in and cates of ’s own rising gleaning movement say around the northern Greek cities of Thessaloni- that it not only feeds the hungry but also improves ki, , and , but have been spreading diets, reduces pressure on land use, restores lost aes- throughout the country, and countryside, as I argue. thetic abilities to evaluate food, and provides work Despite the fact that solidarity food markets are much for the socially excluded (Nelson 2016). Boroúme less visible in relatively conservative areas of Greece, has also begun a program called “The Field of such as Laconia prefecture (the south-eastern corner Boroúme” in which they take advantage of under­ of the where I lived between 2008 and utilized public farms owned by state municipalities 2010), many farmers who participate in solidarity (in outside of Athens for example) to cultivate Athenian markets do in fact come from as far away produce to distribute to residents there. They engage as Laconia. They come for economic purposes but local schoolchildren in this program, planting pota- also because of new structural and ideological con- toes, broccoli, and cabbages so as to restore interest nections they now share with urban Greeks, from in agricultural pursuits and donated close to one ton new roads to new alignments based on shared politi- of produce in 2016. In so doing, as part of a larger cal opponents.7 Agronaftes, or Agronauts, a collective solidarity movement which brings people together of small producers or solidarity growers from the to meet each other’s needs, Boroúme programs be- Peloponnese primarily serving consumers in Athens, come, as Boroúme co-founder Alexander Theodo­ is similar in structure to Community Supported Ag-

104 ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 riculture (CSA) programs that have been operating Food and Refugees in the United States since the 1990s – members buy As with austerity, there has been almost no way for seasonal shares up front and thus absorb some of the any scholar interested in any aspect of Greek society farmer’s risk. However, solidarity growers are more today to avoid thinking critically about the most re- overtly ideological. They share the perspective of care cent global refugee phenomenon. As Papataxiarchis farming initiatives, such as Litsis Ecological Farms explains, “‘solidarity’ responses to the financial cri- in Thessaloniki, for example, which reorients farms sis have been extended into new fields of application toward the inclusion of therapeutic care of vulner- – solidarity has replaced hospitality as the dominant able groups of people as a supplemental goal to food mode of engagement with refugees” (2016: 208). Ka- production. Agronauts is an example of “socially sup- terina Rozakou explains in some more depth: ported agriculture” in Greece, or “koinoniká ypostirí- zomei georgía” which incorporates goals that lie out- The “needy” refugee, this classical figure of hu- side the context of conventional global agribusiness. manitarianism (Fassin 2007; Redfield 2005), has Agronauts was founded by a small group of farm- entered the sphere of solidarity. Despite the fact ers led by Vangelis Vlachakis, who left Athens when that, perhaps, only a minority of local people ac- he became unemployed in the early years of the cur- tively got involved in organised voluntary work rent economic crisis and returned to Laconia to cul- with refugees, the accumulation and circulation tivate his grandfather’s fields. The Agronauts’ net- of goods was massive. Even people who were work also includes other prominent members from sceptical of the newcomers and fearful of conta- Laconia, such as the food company Diamond House gious diseases, contributed offerings. “Everybody in Glykovrisi which produces and biscuits for gives,” solidarians noted, and added that the spe- Agronauts as well as e-blocko.gr shops online and in cificities of the Syrian refugee population mobi- e-blocko stores, specializing in traditional and lo- lised these donations. “They are families, children cal food products from all over Greece at producer and women,” they explained; thus, groups who prices. Agronauts work toward the maintenance of are not only vulnerable in humanitarian terms the social economy, or third economic system as and fuel typical portrayals of refugeeness (Malkki members call it, which prefaces reciprocity as op- 1996), but also culturally significant social cat- posed to the first economic system (that which is pri- egories (cf. Green 2012; Voutira 2003). Thus, in a vate, oriented toward economic gain) and the second context where kinship is highly valued, the view of economic system (that of the state, oriented toward families en route generated vast and, sometimes, social planning). Agronauts also acts as a platform unexpected local responses. (Rozakou 2016: 196) for small and organic farmers to meet and exchange information on sustainable cultivation, the expan- Refugees were quickly thrown into solidary net- sion of smallholder activities, and particularly the works vis-à-vis their immediate needs for such cultivation of traditional varieties vis-à-vis Peliti, things as food and clothing, things that had only re- Greece’s most prominent seed exchange network, cently become exchanged amongst Greeks and non- in response to the commercialization of diets, the refugee migrant groups through social networks. A intensification of agriculture, and environmental special issue of Social Anthropology, the journal of degradation.8 the European Association of Social Anthropologists As one of many solidarity food market networks in the spring of 2016, from which I quote Papataxi- currently operating in the country, Agronauts is a archis and Rozakou, was organized to address this specific new link between Athens and the rural Pelo- almost unbelievably coincidental need that many ponnese as well as a general representation of new Greeks and the growing spectrum of non-Greeks solidarity economies now emerging across the coun- now have for essential goods. try and amongst new sectors of the population. It is not the first time that people from Middle

ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 105 Eastern or South Asian countries have made their flection of the absence of national histories and so- way to Greece looking to move on to “Europe”. cial hierarchies one feels within them – Notara 26 American-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq in and Axarnon 78 are two such structures amongst the early 2000s brought young men escaping vio- the huge proportion of abandoned Athenian real lence to Greece, searching for money to send to their estate resulting from the financial crisis.9 Through families back home, even to remote villages in the the settlement of derelict urban spaces by migrants Peloponnese like Goritsa where I lived at the time. and even the emplacement of refugees within them, Small in numbers as they were, some of the first non- these “refugee squats” become icons of the solidar- Western people many rural Greeks had ever seen, ity movement, spatially chastising what the financial these small groups of young men were rather feared crisis and fears of migrant “hordes” in other Euro- in contrast to the refugee families described by Ro- pean countries with more closed borders have done zakou above. Despite the fact that Greek families to Greeks and refugees alike.10 typically made donations of old clothing and food As might be expected, the basic and essential is- to “their” Afghans in Goritsa, I was scolded by my sues of fundraising and food and clothing stocks Greek friends and family for associating with Afgha­ are typically discussed in squat meetings co-organ- noí outside of work in the fields, especially when I ized by refugees and solidarian workers. Giorgos, was accompanied by my wife or would eat with them one solidarity worker I occasionally spoke with in in the derelict village houses they occupied at the 2016, coordinated a covert donation to refugees by time. the baby food manufacturer he worked for. Obtain- Perhaps ironically, despite the influx of refugees ing food supplies in such ways, cooking and eating in Greece, according to all of the residents of Goritsa together has become a prominent way for relation- I spoke with and based on my own observations in ships between diverse groups to develop. It has also 2016, there are now fewer immigrants in Greek vil- become a way to advertise these relationships be- lages. There never has been any hard or reliable data tween refugees and Greeks in solidarity campaigns, on Afghans in mountain villages and the economic on the internet as well as in other discursive forma- downturn has made them some of the first to lose tions. Notara 26 often displayed images of people employment there, as many Greeks return to farms cooking and eating together on their website at the and all seek to cut superfluous costs, such as for un- time.11 skilled labor picking . Perhaps sentiments have In such sites I began to see new coordinations, indeed changed – as Rozakou’s interlocutors suggest, arguably novel or postmodern, between the sur- “everybody gives.” Perhaps that is a result of the de- vival strategies of the Global North and those of mographic and other related changes in the refugee the Global South (Heller 2013: 2). My inclusion in crisis; while South Asian and Middle Eastern refu- weekly meetings at Notara 26 was through entirely gees were once small groups of wandering young, horizontal channels; from Giorgos I was handed off primarily Afghan, men, there are now massive con- to another solidarian, who brought me to my first centrations of refugee families in refugee camps, meeting. No one sought to identify my role then, controlled areas on islands in the eastern Aegean nor at subsequent meetings. At first I had little idea Sea, and specific urban neighborhoods. In any case, as to who was Greek and who was not. I spoke with the sharing of resources such as food and clothing, as solidarians and refugees often without knowing well as medical care seems to have increased. who was who, except for their proficiency in Greek As borders with the rest of Europe have become or their accent in English. And as I departed from less and less permeable, many migrants and refugees the field, there was no expectation as to what I would have taken up residence in what are referred to as do with the information I had gathered. In this sense domés allilegíes or “solidarity structures” in cities. too, perhaps, some of us gazing in were also given Having no name other than their addresses – a re- somewhat unprecedented roles, as Papataxiarchis

106 ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 says of international solidarian participants in refu- of the EU and globalized agriculture is largely seen gee camps on (2016). as unfriendly in comparison to the internal envi- ronment or actors. Ethno-national and rural-urban Rural Solidarity Movements hierarchies are being reconfigured as a result, in I now double back to the rural settings I first en- conjunction with such cultural values as paréa. Al- countered in the early 2000s. I propose that there ternatives to EU bureaucracy as well as incentives to too, “new” solidarity movements exist, often revolv- consolidate and scale up agriculture are sought from ing around the beliefs and behaviors of solidarity within the confines of local rural villages which now growers such as Agronauts who are partly respon- include many non-Greek residents. sible for the emergence of the solidarity markets Along with paréa, allilovoíthia, ‘mutual aid’ or described above. They are focused particularly on ‘other helping’, certainly part of a segmentary logic safeguarding small-scale agriculture, other values of traditional Greek life, remains a core compo- inherent to traditional agricultural communities, nent of rural commensality. This village or horió and agricultural biodiversity. Yet there are specific logic has been transplanted onto the frameworks of links between rural solidarity movements or net- solidarity economies today, in urban as well as ru- works and social kitchens, solidarity food markets, ral locations (Loizos 1975; Rakopoulos 2016b: 143; and food rescue movements identified primarily in Vernier 1984). As Theodoros Rakopoulos points out, urban areas. These include a focus on such things as “the overall tendency [of solidarity work], including the amelioration of social conflicts between groups claims to the horio, temporarily tackles difference, in everyday practices and strategies, sustainability, and suggests similarity or assimilation” (2016b: and the consideration of the marginal position of 148). Whether these strategies be considered more Greece in relation to the northern European core. specifically in the spirit of collaboration (Terkes- Somewhat without formal networks, largely unob- sidis 2015), convivéncia (Suárez-Navaz 2005), en- servable, and at risk of co-optation by conventional dogenous development (Ray 2000), or some other politics though they may be, the rural socio-ecolog- theoretical proposition, agriculturalists in Greece ical movements I describe in this section are future of various ethno-national backgrounds have now visions of food, agriculture, and communal life by a long been taking advantage of new opportunities new collection of rural residents. to establish solidarity with one another. Beyond Adding rural solidarity movements to these other the affordable labor that non-Greeks have provided movements is perhaps somewhat arbitrary. That Greeks with since the beginning of the post-socialist people need to collectively produce food and eat migrations in the early 1990s, they also provide the to survive wherever they are or share occupational means for rural Greeks in an extremely expensive practices whoever they are is arguably intellectually and bureaucratic EU to continue living in a man- empty. Yet paréa, ‘company’, in the sense of people ner consistent with the history of rural Greek liveli- being together with other people – to share subsist- hoods – by harvesting and selling animal manure (a ence goods– is born in Greek meals. Many Greek cheaper alternative fertilizer), wild hyacinth bulbs (a cultural values, such as paréa have emerged from Greeks seldom harvest themselves agricultural life. The contemporary socio-economic any longer), or producing homemade tsípouro (a crisis in Greece has reinforced the family character pomace liquor as a means to reach kéfi, ‘good of farms and inspired new cooperative strategies in humor’ or ‘good life’, with others) for example (Pa- the light of this particular cultural value (Ragkos et pataxiarchis 1991). al. 2016). Greek masculinities and femininities are The post-socialist emigration to Greece, primarily similarly engaged as women have begun to take plac- from Albania beginning in 1991, is now a key com- es on farms again in response to joblessness (Petrou ponent of history. The integration 2012). More to the point, the external environment of Greek-speaking or Orthodox Christians from

ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 107 the region of Albania Greeks refer to as North Epi- migration waves from Africa, South Asia, and the rus, people collectively known as Vóreioépirótes or Middle East inform reactions to the earlier migra- North Epirots, along with many who were lumped tions (Papadapoulos & Fratsea 2013), we see ethnic in with this controversial group of people, has be- rapprochement that I now consider part of a rural come manifest largely in terms of the traditional solidarity movement, one that puts local residents capabilities in stone construction and agriculture of multiple ethnicities in more horizontal relation- that they possessed. As global agribusiness trends ships with one another. Solidarity networks in small continue to threaten the viability of relatively small- cities like Sparta and the surrounding countryside scale Greek agriculture, the costs of maintaining in Laconia, as opposed to [global] cities that have these sometimes ancient villages and agricultural a critical mass of migrants or more absolute breaks spaces have become increasingly insurmountable.12 in socio-economic safety nets (such as that between Because of the lack of institutional support frame- urban Greeks and their agricultural pasts), exhibit works, local farmers have sought collaboration with diverse hierarchies and forms of identification with new migrants on their own terms. These terms and incorporation of immigrants. A shared familiar- have of course been somewhat exploitative from ity with certain aspects of the Mediterranean land- the perspective of much work in political economy scape, climate, fruits, and soils is being discovered, (Lawrence 2007; Petrou 2005). Numerous scholars for example. Rural Greek villages and landscapes have convincingly argued that Europeans have ex- are being reterritorialized or reappropriated by this ploited migrants living in various states of precar- quasi-coalition to reestablish convivéncia. In other ity by excluding them from paths to citizenship and words, rural solidarity movements, while never so fair wages so as to safeguard their own diminishing egalitarian, contest the simplistic view of migrant shares of European economic wealth. Some, such as exploitation. The case of Lurka D. related by Vassilis Cheliotis and Xenakis (2016) insist that Greek state Nitsiakos (2003), a portrayal of an Albanian man policies that create arduous asylum procedures (or who has become “like a son” to a man whose own no procedures at all) for the regularization of ille- son has emigrated abroad, or the many accounts that gal migration and migrant employment are part of a I have made of non-Greeks who have become farm- larger movement to provide the country with afford- ers in their own rights (Verinis 2015), some of whom able labor. This is another form of resistance to the I revisit below, are testimonies to this. marginalization resulting from European neoliber- One of the ways that I came to realize this coali- alism, perhaps. However, given Greece’s weak scalar tion or movement, albeit inherently quasi or infor- positioning with regard to Europe and the absence mal (not easily identified as Castells, Caraça and of policy support for small-scale agriculture, it is Cardoso put it, 2012), was through the process of hardly surprising that rural Greeks remain largely evaluating the potential during fieldwork in 2016 for disinterested in policy reforms that have seldom official state rural development policy to address the benefitted them in any substantial way and would incorporation of immigrants in rural development prefer to seek to ameliorate their situations in tradi- programs as has happened in the USA for example. tional terms they have some control over.13 All local Greek farmers, non-Greek farmers, Laco- In their indifference to EU bureaucracy or in nian municipal agronomists, and officials from ru- keeping with the segmentary logic of traditional ral development programs such as the Greek Young Greek reciprocal relationships with “others”, Greek Farmer Program I spoke with, along with the secre- farmers have indeed sought to take whatever ad- tary general at the Greek Ministry of Rural Devel- vantage they can from positions that are superior opment and Food in Athens himself (a well-known to those of non-Greeks. Nonetheless, from the out- rural sociologist), deflected, seemed bewildered by, set, and increasingly as Greece’s relationship within or just plain ignored my queries about the potential the EU has become more tenuous and subsequent for such policy initiatives. My exasperation eventu-

108 ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 ally gave way to a realization that, for all parties, the strengthened my convictions that food and agri- point is to avoid official policy. In light of the fact culture continue to bring Greek residents into such that EU or state politics are not seen as capable of ad- significant relations with one another. Of course dressing the difficulties small-scale farmers face or immigrant residents in Greece have certainly fallen the plight of immigrants, let alone simultaneously, on hard times. Stefanos and Fotini, Bulgarians who it is better to simply avoid policy approaches alto- have lived in Skoura – a village less than ten kilo­ gether. This resistance is hardly a neat opposition, in meters southeast of Sparta – for decades, have given medias res perhaps, but it is ubiquitous. up running the kafeneíon they had run during the As with the seemingly arbitrary nature of food years of my dissertation fieldwork, that which had movements or rural networks, to label this sig- placed them at the center of village life. Their two nificant resistance might seem like somewhat of an children have also since moved back to academic stretch. Papataxiarchis (2016) asks us to despite having spent most of their lives in Greece. consider the irony of identifying a set of “solidarity” Yet Stefanos and Fotini refuse to leave their adopted movements in a place traditionally segmentary, its home and have consequently put all of their energies people in generally agonistic if not altogether antag- into their beekeeping and olive farming endeavors. onistic relations with one another. Agricultural co- In these hard times, they have reinvested in tradi- operatives that dominated the social, political, and tional small-scale agriculture much like their Greek economic landscapes of rural Greece between the neighbors. Ottoman period and the 1990s have become largely Albanian Lefteris is in a comparable position. ineffectual except for a few cases such as the fruit Noteworthy are the ways he now conspires with local cooperative of Naoussa in northern Greece or the Greeks in order to frighten neighboring Roma away cooperative of producers in Kritsa, . from his fields, in the Laconian village of Asteri, by Similarly, successful small anonymous corporations allowing the Roma to think, as the police suggested (S.A.s) such as Kefalas Sparti and Bläuel Greek Or- to him, that he is a “dangerous Albanian”.15 While ganic Food Products, both of which produce pri- this tool is a by-product of an exploitive relationship marily olives and olive oil in Laconia prefecture, are in which Lefteris would normally suffer, relatively few. In the absence of any formal or even such as Lefteris now wield some of these conspira- traditional way to align horizontally with anyone in torial tools along with Greeks for their own benefit. particular so as to withstand global economic forces What is more, the conspiracy is arguably reminis- that threaten the survival of small and cooperative cent of traditional Greek agonistic relations between endeavors (threats in the form of rural stigma and segmented groups. All of this complicates a stand- depopulation as well as cheap Argentine lemons or ard political economy approach to Pierre Bourdieu’s high quality olive oil from California), alternative “flexploitation” (1998: 85).16 relationships develop between Greeks and long- Mitsos continues to farm olives in nearby Zoupe- standing non-Greek residents, as they become kin na with the same fervor since first arriving from through marriage and baptism, engage in reciprocal Albania more than twenty-five years ago. As with relations, and share community life in general. As Lefteris and other “non-Greeks” I farmed with be- Greeks and non-Greeks participate alongside each tween 2008 and 2010, Mitsos’ children were born other in these agricultural endeavors, in the agonía in Greece. Despite the fact that Mitsos is not gener- or struggle of contemporary rural Greek life, they ally considered to be Vóreioépirótis, his exceptional share and exchange sensual relationships which en- charm and extended family ties (through baptisms culturate, reevaluate, and reposition them as partici- in the Greek Orthodox church necessitating Greek pants in the production of new memories.14 godfathers and godmothers, school friends of his Visiting with some of my most evocative non- children, and so on) have helped him to participate Greek farmer interlocutors in Laconia in 2016 in all sorts of collaborations with local Greek fami-

ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 109 lies. He continues to sell his olives directly to mer- ing a kidney stone. Mitsos instructed him, in some chants at the Greek supermarket chain Promithefit- detail, how to make a from the stomach of a kí. In a somewhat uncanny way, Mitsos displays the chicken so as to facilitate relief. As Albanians have kind of Greek hospitality or philoxenía that ethnog- long had less access to Western biomedicine, Greeks raphers of Greece have long written of, showering now rely on Albanians for alternative therapies dur- other members of his paréa with copious amounts ing these desperate financial times. Beyond the obvi- of coffee and cigarettes (as always, he insisted I take ous depth of their relationship, the exchange of this tenakéthes – 17 liter tins – of his olive oil home with traditional rural remedy is indicative of a larger set me after my last visit in 2016). While this can be seen of responsibilities to share essential goods that rural as mere mimicry of Greek mannerism, it disrupts as Greek residents of various ethno-nationalities now much as it reinforces traditional segmentary recip- feel toward each other. Pandelis complained about rocal relations. how long it would take to get an appointment to see Mitsos admitted that some Albanians have left his doctor as well as the “useless” pills that he had as the economic downturn has become a true crisis already been given and listened intently to the young over the last few years. Yet, as he told me, not one of Albanian’s prescription. the dozen or so Albanians that I had worked with Individual rural families and business-owners and whom Mitsos knew well have left their respec- are incorporating non-Greeks of myriad ethno- tive homes in Laconia. And while Mitsos did agree national backgrounds into their personal and pro- that it has become harder to buy land from Greek fessional lives in the abovementioned ways. They landowners, he had recently bought more in order to become godparents of immigrant children and sell reinvest in his farm operations. local non-Greeks portions of their farms, as op- As had been the case in previous years, Greeks posed to Athenians whom they essentially see as ab- would often go out of their way to explain to me how sentee landlords, so as to establish sustainable face- they knew Mitsos in 2016. One morning an older to-face socio-economic safety nets in local terms. Greek man from Zoupena named Pandelis proudly These Greeks and non-Greeks are in a somewhat pointed out that he has known Mitsos since the day novel relationship, to the extent that they conspire he arrived from Albania. Pandelis made sure to ex- to benefit each other for the first time in modern plain to me in a kafetéria one afternoon what an ex- Greek history. And yet the ways that they conspire ceptional “Albanian” Mitsos is. Critical analysis may are historically particular and local. At times now it normally interpret this descriptor as divisive. Using can be a non-Greek who facilitates or conjures the the phrase o Alvanós mou (‘my Albanian’) has been Greek senses of philoxenía, paréa, allilegíi, and even a common exclusionary strategy for decades now, philótimo – the dominant Greek value of experienc- but it also sets a kinship boundary line between one ing and valuing oneself as part of a system of group family’s “Albanian” (worker or koumbáros [relative relatedness. Whether it is considered a solidar- through baptism or marriage]) from the “hordes” of ity network or movement, these new rural relations Albanians that “poured” through the borders in the have much to do with other communitarian coali- early 1990s. Pandelis’ description is hardly inclusive tions that have garnered the attention of social scien- of Albanians in one sense. And yet, in keeping with tists in the past few years. They revolve around many traditional Greek agonistic relations between family of the same ethical dilemmas that urban solidarians farms, it is quite inclusive indeed.17 have concerned themselves with and are predicated Another window deeper into the relationship upon many of the same beliefs and practices that Mitsos and Pandelis share opened during a discus- food solidarity movements are predicated upon – sion that followed. In response to Mitsos’ questions mutual subsistence, the sharing of responsibilities, a about the old man’s overall wellbeing, Pandelis be- reformulation of social hierarchies, and resistance to gan to describe recent problems he had had in pass- neoliberal Europe.

110 ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 Conclusion rural ways of life, or share pride in being able to pro- New solidarities are inherent to capitalist procedures vide each other with food and thus without the need in difficult financial periods. Of course the new soli- for charity in traditional food markets. darities I discuss in this paper – forms of reliance on Historical as well as present-day ethnic entrepre- kin networks, neighbors, neighborhood, or village neurism should certainly be considered (Dimen- – are reminiscent of many forms of reciprocal rela- Schein 1975; Glick-Schiller 2008). Mark Granovetter tions in the Greek past. Yet a culture of indifference (1973) argues that communities that continue to rely and cynicism with regard to the bureaucracy of EU upon strong ties of kinship and ethnicity will lock technocracy has grown since the state’s incorpora- themselves in economically stagnant enclaves. This tion in 1981 into the EU federation (Herzfeld 1992). prognosis, in the light of a crisis of capitalism as well Reliance on each other has taken on sometimes un- as a global migration crisis, invites scholars to inves- canny forms in order to fulfill social as well as so- tigate supposed “weak” ties of friendship and trust matic needs. The financial crisis has encouraged this – how and when they might become extended or reliance on historical, cultural patterns as well as a “strong”, even transcending social hierarchies and new collection of participants. expectations of reciprocation. As we speak of flex- The relationship I describe between various kinds ploitation but also begin to think about the myriad of food movements is also a proper Greek topos. other opportunities that also emerge in the form of Yoghurting, a form of public critique born in the new social flexibilities to recapture social capital, we 1950s – throwing ’s milk yoghurt on people, should consider whether or not this is “our father’s” typically politicians in order to shame them for be- ethnic entrepreneurism. Ethnic entrepreneurism ing corrupt and the antithesis of the “honorable” includes the exploitation of others but can also in- Greek peasant – has again become a form of cri- clude significant co-ethnic rapprochement. Kin and tique of urban (read non-Greek) values (Sutton et ethnic boundaries reveal themselves as having quite al. 2013). An academic consideration of yoghurting, a few permutations in some cases. Possibilities for or the networks and movements described in this social development that focuses on this “new” Greek paper, not only draws together the Greek urban and social capital as opposed to financial capital may be- rural in ideological as well as materialistic ways. It come more visible if ethnic entrepreneurism is con- brings to light the expanded significance food now sidered for all that it is. Otherwise we not only reify enjoys vis-à-vis EU austerity, global migration pat- ethnicity as something beyond the tool that it is, as terns, the refugee crisis, technocracy, concerns about Dimen-Schein warns, but we lose opportunities to bioengineering, and other “trouble spots” particular use it in order to socially organize in a diversity of to the twenty-first century. ways. In these different solidarity food movements we These are the potentialities in Anna Tsing’s see networks emerge around one group, be they “seams” or “patches” of empire. People seek to sur- migrant non-Greeks or disenfranchised Greeks or vive certain unprecedented and destructive forms refugees, and inevitably they have come to include of modernity. Alliances that may seem incidental others, as in the case of the social kitchen El Chef to larger forces must be investigated. As Anastasia (initially focused on Greek relationships with mi- Karakasidou has written: “In the new millennium, it grants) and O Állos Anthrópos (which has recently is certain that cancer strikes Greeks and Slavs, Vlachs extended itself to the island of Lesbos or Mytilene and Gypsies, Christians and Muslims indiscrimi- to commune with refugees there). Instances of rap- nately” (2011: 396). Fertilizers, mono-cropping, and prochement, between Greeks and non-Greeks, rich pesticides have made whole swaths of enemies, re- and poor, and producers and consumers crystallize gardless of their ethno-national identities, religions, as people share food and drink at social kitchens, and political statuses. Resilience, in ecological, so- conspire together to support each other’s traditional cial, economic, cultural, and even in evolutionary

ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 111 terms, is now sought in emergent solidarities – sites another. Kéfi, which again is ‘good humor’ or ‘good of new belonging and ethical concerns (Bourdieu, in life’, is premised on a disregard for social hierarchies Vidali 2015: 195). Though hardly utopic, these are and actions that might be in any way construed as ubiquitous beginnings in the amelioration of socio- gifts (Rozakou 2016). Kéfi evolves outside of official economic problems that all kinds of people cur- political policies and capitalist markets. The world rently face. of obligations in traditionally agonistic Greek life One set of destructive forms of modernity is made also gives way in kéfi to other forms of sociality, up of contemporary problems many Greek peo- expanding other culturally specific notions such as ple face in growing, distributing, obtaining, cook- philoxenía or paréa. As Greek residents, including ing, and eating food. I believe that identifying a set even some relatively recently arrived economic mi- of food solidarity movements or networks has the grants and political refugees, attempt to reconstruct potential to address these problems and contribute the village or horió or some other form of commu- to broad theories of Greek “solidarity” as part of a nity, in urban as well as rural places, the transcend- postmodern or post-colonial Greek history as well as ent kéfi is at play. Non-Greeks such as Mitsos have anthropological theories of the European Mediter- done a great deal to reinvigorate this specific form ranean, which is increasingly affected by global mi- of solidarity. He and other non-Greek farmers I have grations. In the case of my fieldwork amongst Greek worked with have now also become key to my think- and non-Greek farmers begun in 2008 as well as in ing about new exchanges of essential goods taking this more recent fieldwork period, a motley crew place in new food solidarity movements that com- of Greeks increasingly seem to share kéfi with one plicate the rural–urban and Greek–non-Greek di- chotomies. Is kéfi a way for scholars to comprehend relationships in Greece that do not technically exist? That question is perhaps best discussed over a .

Notes 1 Fieldwork in 2016 was funded by an Engaged Anthro- pology Grant from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. 2 The Greek Statistical Service (ELSTAT) reported that 133,787 Albanian nationals left Greece in 2011–2012. Similarly, the Greek Social Security Fund (IKA) re- ported that the number of Albanian nationals insured in 2009 reached 121,902, while at the end of 2013 the number decreased to 85,893. 3 The post-socialist 1990s ushered in the first pro- nounced in nearly seventy years, since over one million Greeks from Asia Minor had been repatriated in the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne. 4 A 1991 Commission of the European Communities (CEC) paper entitled “The development and future of the Common Agricultural Policy,” insists that despite abandonment, agriculture remains highly significant in a number of ways; “Sufficient numbers of farmers must be kept on the land. There is no other way to pre- serve the natural environment, traditional landscapes, and a model of agriculture based on the family farm as favored by society generally.” Yet things have not borne Ill. 1: A contemporary collection of Greek residents con- out in ways reflective of this policy. A study conducted spire to subsist in central Athens. (Photo: James Verinis, by the Technical College of Agricultural Engineers in 2016) Madrid found that the smallest olive plantations in the

112 ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 southern EU member states, those which were the most citizens since I last saw them in 2012 is beside the point favorable to the health of local ecosystems, suffered a perhaps, yet this does also complicate simplistic un- net annual loss of 402.50 euro per hectare while the derstandings of ethnic marginalization in recent social farms that had the most negative impact had an annual science literature on Greece. profit of 1,378 per hectare (Euromed 2008). 17 That [rural] Greece does not subscribe to the exact 5 Daniel Knight has written that Greeks now flock to ca- kinds of political correctness typically found in the fés and restaurants in a defiant refusal to play the role [urban] United States with regard to talk about race or of the downtrodden poor (2015: 121–131, in Herzfeld ethnicity is certainly an important point to consider. 2016: 202). In reminding me how to get to his house, Stefanos sug- 6 Dimitris Theodossopoulos (2016) explores ideological gested with no hint of sarcasm that I simply ask where dispositions toward such charitable organizations in Stefanos “the Bulgarian” lives. In fact, like all the non- the contemporary Greek context, particularly amongst Greeks I knew, I referred to people’s ethno-nationali- members of the communist party – the KKE – in Patras. ties after their first names beside their phone numbers 7 While it takes only 2.5 hours to get from Athens to in my mobile phone. Sparta today, it was close to double less than ten years ago. References 8 Peliti, Greece’s most well-known exchange network of Al Jazeera 2012: People and Power: Greece – the . Al landrace, indigenous, and unmodified seed, launched Jazeera, December 27. its first “Solidarity Caravan for Seed” across Europe in Angelopoulos, Georgios 2016: Ex Nihilo Fit: On the Greek the Spring of 2016 to help establish an association be- Crisis. In: Greece is Burning. Cultural Anthropology Series. tween cultural and seed diversity. April 21. 9 Axarnon 78 is also sometimes referred to as the Athens Arampatzi, Athina 2016: The Spatiality of Counter-Austerity City Plaza Hotel. As a former hotel, it is remarkable that Politics in Athens, Greece: Emergent “Urban Solidarity it is now a refugee squat, but also remarkable is the fact Spaces”. Urban Studies 54:9, 2155–2171. that it is not dilapidated like other squats in the city. Bakalaki, Alexandra 2003: Locked into Security, Keyed into This contributes to the fact that it has retained its for- Modernity: The Selection of Burglaries as Source of Risk mer identity to an extent. in Greece. Ethnos 68:2, 209–229. 10 A social geographer named Thomas Maloutas at Du Boulay, Juliet 1991: Strangers and Gifts: Hostility and Harokopeio University in Athens has developed a new Hospitality in Rural Greece. Journal of Mediterranean social atlas that, amongst other things, overlays home- Studies 1:1, 37–53. lessness with vacant buildings scattered all over the city Bourdieu, Pierre 1998: On Television. New York: The New in keeping with solidarian ideals. Press. 11 On August 24, 2016, Notara 26 was burned beyond re- Cabot, Heath 2015: The Banality of Solidarity. Occasional pair by arsonists with incendiary devices. Papers, Modern Greek Studies Association, Journal of Mod- 12 Greek agriculture, along with other Mediterranean ern Greek Studies 7. countries, does not fair relatively well in comparison to Cabot, Heath 2016: “Contagious” Solidarity: Reconfiguring the intensive production regimes of more central and Care and Citizenship in Greece’s Social Clinics. Social An- northern European countries such as the thropology 24:2, 152–166. (Van der Ploeg 2003, 2008). Campbell, John 1964: Honour, Family and Patronage: A 13 Laconia is a particularly peripheral Greek prefecture, Study of Institutions and Moral Values in a Greek Mountain one of the least favored areas (LFAs) in Greece. It con- Community. Oxford: Clarendon Press. sistently has some of the lowest national rankings in Castells, Manuel, João Caraça & Gustavo Cardoso 2012: Af- such terms as unemployment, savings, and income termath: The Cultures of the Economic Crisis. Oxford: Uni- (Verinis 2015: 187). Its relationship to other Greek pre- versity Press. fectures is reflective of Greece’s relationship to other Cheliotis, Leonidas K. & Sappho Xenakis 2016: Punishment EU member countries. and Political Systems: State Punitiveness in Post-dictatori- 14 Nadia Seremetakis (1994: 144) describes such sensorial al Greece. 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114 ETHNOLOGIA EUROPAEA 48:1 Skill, and Everyday Life on an Aegean Island. Oakland: Uni- Circulation of Goods, Labour, and Names on . versity of California Press. In: Hans Medick & David Warren Sabean (eds.), Interest Sutton, David, Nefissa Naguib, Leonidas Vournelis & Maggie and Emotion: Essays on the Study of Family and Kinship. Dickinson 2013: Food and Contemporary Protest Move- Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press. ments. Food, Culture & Society 16:3, 345–366. Vidali, Maria 2015: Sustainable Landscape and Community Terkessidis, Mark 2015: Kollaboration. Berlin: Suhrkamp. on the Greek Island of . European Journal of Sustain- Theodossopoulos, Dimitris 2016: Philanthropy or Solidar- able Development 4:2, 195. ity? Ethical Dilemmas about Humanitarianism in Crisis- Wanshel, Elyse 2016: Huffington Post, May 10. afflicted Greece. Social Anthropology 24:2, 167–184. Thompson, E.P. 1971: The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century. Past and Present 50, James P. Verinis, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist whose 76–136. research, conducted primarily in Greece and surrounding Tsing, Anna Lowenhaupt 2012: Unruly Edges: Mushrooms parts of South-Eastern Europe, has focused on ethno-na- as Companion Species for Donna Haraway. Environmen- tional identity, the revival of the modern Olympic Games, tal Humanities 1:1, 141–154. immigration, agriculture, food, and the environment. He is Verinis, James P. 2015: The Black Swans of Greece’s Global currently adjunct professor of anthropology at Roger Wil- Countrysides: Post-socialist Immigrant Farmers, Small liams University and Salve Regina University in Rhode Is- Greek Farms, Integration, and [under] Development. land, USA. Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Binghamton. ([email protected]) Vernier, Bernard 1984: Putting Kinship to Good Use: The

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