La evolución del desarrollo desigual y las formas de reproducción social en Grecia

Les descriptions officielles des inégalités actuelles en Grèce soulignent la surconcentration des activités économiques, de la population et de la richesse dans une région métropolitaine, l'Athique, et, dans une moindre mesure, à Salonique. Par conséquent, les politiques régionales qui sont proposées ont pour objectif centra1 la décentralisation de l'industrie moyennant des incentifs aux capitaux et des exemptions fiscales, et aussi moyennant la localisation des gros établissements industriels publics dans les régions périphériques.Official descriptions of current uneveness in Greece emphasize the over-concentration of economic activities, population and wealth in one metropolitan region, Attica, and to a lesser degree in Thessaloniki. Following this hypothesis, proposed regional policies focus on decentralization of industry via capital incentives and tax exemptions, and via the location of large, state-owned plants in peripheral regions.La descripción oficial de la actual desigualdad regional en Grecia hace hincapit en la concentracion excesiva de actividades economicas, población y riqueza en una región metropolitana, Ática, y, en menor grado, en Salónica (Plan Quinquenal, 1983; TRITSIS, 1981). Según estos planteamientos, el resto de Grecia continúa siendo una (área rural arruinada). De acuerdo con esta hipótesis, la política regional que se propone esta orientada hacia la descentralización de la industria mediante exenciones fiscales e incentivos al capital, y mediante el establecimiento de grandes factorias de propiedad estatal en regiones periféricas

Desarrollo geográfico desigual y crisis de la Unión Europea: conferencia a cargo del Doctor Costis Hadjimichalis

Costis nos va a hablar en la conferencia de los capítulos 2 y 3 de su libro más reciente, llamado Crisis Spaces: Structures, Struggles and Solidarity in Southern Europe [Espacios de crisis: estructuras, luchas y solidaridades en el sur de Europa, 2017, Routledge, Londres]. En el libro el autor brinda una sólida explicación de largo plazo acerca de las causas de la crisis en los países del sur europeo.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Desarrollo geográfico desigual y crisis de la Unión Europea: conferencia a cargo del Doctor Costis Hadjimichalis

Costis nos va a hablar en la conferencia de los capítulos 2 y 3 de su libro más reciente, llamado Crisis Spaces: Structures, Struggles and Solidarity in Southern Europe [Espacios de crisis: estructuras, luchas y solidaridades en el sur de Europa, 2017, Routledge, Londres]. En el libro el autor brinda una sólida explicación de largo plazo acerca de las causas de la crisis en los países del sur europeo.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Desarrollo geográfico desigual y crisis de la Unión Europea: conferencia a cargo del Doctor Costis Hadjimichalis

Costis nos va a hablar en la conferencia de los capítulos 2 y 3 de su libro más reciente, llamado Crisis Spaces: Structures, Struggles and Solidarity in Southern Europe [Espacios de crisis: estructuras, luchas y solidaridades en el sur de Europa, 2017, Routledge, Londres]. En el libro el autor brinda una sólida explicación de largo plazo acerca de las causas de la crisis en los países del sur europeo.Facultad de Humanidades y Ciencias de la Educació

Staging equality in Greek squares: hybrid spaces of political subjectification

This article stages a dialogue between Jacques Rancière's political writings and the squares movement in Greece. From May to July 2011, a heterogeneous multitude of protesters reclaimed the squares of the country from their allocation in the police order and articulated a multiplicity of divergent discursive, organizational and spatial repertoires. This was an urban political event that reasserted the importance of urban spaces in expressing political dissent and experimented with new ways of being and acting in common. This article draws on Rancière's conceptualization of politics to read the squares movement as an opening of spaces of political subjectification. At the same time, through a close ethnography of the squares, it highlights the tensions that marked this process and focuses on two of these: the coexistence of nationalist and equalibertarian discursive and performative repertoires and the co-implication of horizontal and vertical organizational practices. The article builds on this analysis to argue that the squares movement opened hybrid spaces of political subjectification and to explore some of the tensions in Rancière's political writings. This reading, in turn, informs a discussion of the legacies of the squares movement

The international face of Thessaloniki: the “Greek crisis,” the entrepreneurial mayor, and mainstream media discourses

Thessaloniki and its mayor have been portrayed quite favourably in international mainstream media compared to the Greek state after the 2008 economic crisis. The dominant (media) discourses on Greece interpret the crisis as the result of the failure of the Greek state to reform due to the prevalence of a traditional political culture over a modern one and the moral failures of the population. In the international media representations of Thessaloniki, the local government has been described as “exceptional” in its crisis management compared to the state and other local governments, and the city's mayor, Yiannis Boutaris, has been portrayed as a reform hero, due to the implemented entrepreneurial development strategy and the revamp of the city's image through place branding. Analysing the key role of international media in the production and reproduction of a place-branding campaign of Thessaloniki in international media by employing critical discourse analysis, the paper questions the favourable representations of the city compared to the Greek state during the same period. I argue that the serial repetition of positive images contributed to Thessaloniki being perceived as an example to be followed by other Greek local governments and the central state, acting as a best practice example for transformations envisioned on wider scales. The paper contributes to place-branding debates by illustrating the important role of international media in the dissemination of place brands, and by analysing how media representations of place may serve the legitimation of processes of neoliberalisation on scales wider than the concrete urban setting where they occur

Economic crisis and regional resilience: detecting the ‘geographical footprint’ of economic crisis in Greece

Taking stock from the research on regional resilience and by constructing a composite regional resilience indicator this paper sets out to detect the resistance/vulnerability of Greek regions and prefectures to economic crisis. Analysis is based on a newly elaborated dataset with socio-demographic, economic and welfare variables for Greek regions enabling to pre and after-crisis comparisons. Results highlight the multiplicity of ways in which crisis impacts on regions. Metropolitan areas and regions that are based on manufacturing activities seem to have been more vulnerable to crisis while places that are based on tourism such as islands are usually more resistant. Regional policy seems to be pro-cyclical to economic downturn

Separate worlds? Explaining the current wave of regional economic polarization

Inter-regional and inter-metropolitan economic divergence is greater in many western developed countries than it has been in many decades. Divergence manifests itself in many ways, including per capita income, labor force participation, and the spatial the distribution of skills and returns to education. At the same time, geographical polarization of political preferences and electoral choices has increased, with gains in populism and nationalism in some regions, and broadening of socially liberal, pro-trade, and multicultural attitudes in other regions. The task of explaining these developments poses challenges to economic geography and regional and urban economics. These fields have already developed some of the building blocks of an account, but a number of important gaps persist. This article is devoted to identifying priorities for regional science and urban economics, the new economic geography, and proper economic geography to tackle the key mechanisms behind divergence as well as to integrate them in a common overall framework

Luchas urbanas y construcción de redes de solidaridad en Atenas durante la crisis

Urban struggles and urban social movements are widespread in Southern European cities since the interwar period, during dictatorships and civil wars and particularly after the 1970s and the rise of urban speculation in all countries. The economic crisis since 2008-9 changed dramatically the wider socio-political context and now speculation around land and real estate has been an integral part of the current crisis. Streets and squares became again part of central politics but with new demands and tactics. What differentiates the Greek, and particularly the Athenian, tradition of urban struggles from conventional use of streets and squares in politics —a case which has more dissimilarities than similarities with Spain, Portugal and Italy— is the more comprehensive political use of the urban and particularly the city center as a major fi eld of struggle from the early 21st century onwards. The paper explores these developments trough the analysis of three major urban events in Athens, the rise of radical political left and a series of emancipatory solidarity social networks in all major Greek urban centers.Las luchas y los movimientos sociales urbanos, desde el periodo de entreguerras, durante las dictaduras y guerras civiles y particularmente después de la década de 1970 y el auge de la especulación urbana en todos los países, se han generalizado en las ciudades del sureste europeo. La crisis económica surgida entre 2008 y 2009 cambió drásticamente el contexto sociopolítico más amplio y ahora la especulación sobre el suelo y las propiedades inmobiliarias ha venido a ser parte fundamental de la crisis actual. Las calles y plazas se han convertidode nuevo en un elemento político central pero con nuevas demandas y estrategias. Lo que diferencia la tradición griega, y particularmente la ateniense, en luchas urbanas del uso convencional de calles y plazas en política —un caso con más diferencias que similitudes respecto a España, Portugal e Italia— es la mayorcomprensión del uso político de lo urbano, y particularmente del centro de la ciudad como el principal ámbitopara la lucha desde el comienzo del s. XXI. Este artículo explora estos desarrollos a través del análisis de tres de los principales eventos urbanos acontecidos en Atenas, el aumento de la política radical de izquierdas y la aparición de una serie de redes sociales de solidaridad y emancipación en los principales centros urbanos de Grecia