A critical perspective on economy, modernity and temporality in contemporary Greece through the prism of energy practice

During the Greek economic crisis a focus on energy practice highlights the temporal complexities of local coping strategies. Re-launched in 2011, the European Union supported solar energy initiative encourages installation of futuristic, high-tech photovoltaic panels on fertile agricultural land. Entangled with intricate notions of neo-colonialism and occupation, the solar program provides extra income for disenfranchised farmers and much needed local employment opportunities. However, winter 2012-13 witnessed a return en-mass to ‘archaic’ open fires and wood-burning stoves that locals associate with material poverty, pre-modernity, and pre-Europeanization. Energy practice provides a prism through which to discuss increased social suffering and reassess the place of Greece in a modern Europe

Chronic crisis and the psychosocial in central Greece

In Central Greece, the 2009/10 economic crisis has lost its eventedness, with crisis becoming a chronic condition with its own set of temporal rhythms and orientations. Even with Greece officially ‘out’ of crisis, local vernaculars of captivity have come to the fore as people relate to lives deemed without a future, feelings of stuckedness, futility, and an intimate uncomfortable comfort with an endemic condition. As the rupture of crisis becomes a chronic state, people report experiencing a form of societal Stockholm Syndrome, a profound familiarity with routinized axiomatic violence. Contributing to emergent debates on chronic crisis, the psychosocial, and the aesthetics of captivity, societal Stockholm Syndrome provides an alternative framework to understand lives trapped in the spin-cycle of seemingly permanent crisis

The desire for disinheritance in austerity Greece

Associated with notions of family continuity, lineage, national belonging, and cultural roots, in Greece property inheritance was once highly desired. Yet, in recent years, there has been a rising trend of people wanting to be disinherited because of the economic burden of new taxes introduced as part of the international austerity program and the need to focus all resources on the short-term future of the immediate family. The desire for disinheritance amounts to a longing for disconnectedness, for exiting not only political structures but also kinship structures that have been historically closely linked with a Greek sense of self as particular political subjects. A focus on inheritance demonstrates how the political can be located in the mundane and the everyday.PostprintPeer reviewe

The death of vernacular cosmopolitanism

The paper offers a mutliscalar appreciation of vernacular cosmopolitanism as changing across space, time, and networks of relations. Drawing on observations from the UK and Greece, I argue for an expanded understanding of vernacular cosmopolitanism to incorporate everyday appreciations of multiculturalism, tolerance, and social liberalism that are produced within specific socio-historical contexts. Proposing a theory of ‘timespace’ where epochs are structured by networks of potential relations, affects, bureaucracies, and prevailing ideologies that guide individual and collective actions, I argue that vernacular cosmopolitanism is no longer a prominent worldview in Western democracies. Freedoms to fully realise cosmopolitan ideals are intimately entwined with the structures and affects of a timespace, which gives momentum to, provides guidance, and inherently opens and closes doors to the types of life that can be pursued. In the UK and Greece, current affective structures present people with vastly different projects, recommended paths, and futures to aspire to. With the sharp turn to the right in the post-truth age, vernacular cosmopolitanism has receded at the grassroots level. I thus propose that vernacular cosmopolitanism is under attack as epochal change offers alternate prevailing worldviews.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Afterword : vertiginous life and the inconstancy of becoming in the Mediterranean

The socio-historical nexus that is topologically interwoven throughout the Mediterranean region provides the background for a comparative framework for capturing the dizzying affects of precarious life in the 21st century. The conceptual triad of uncertainty, resilience, and futures is key to presenting life on the vertiginous “edge” as people tackle crises in Greece, Italy, Morocco, Portugal and Tunisia. Standing on the brink of time and of history-making, people face a decision of whether to cling by their fingernails to former lives, former Selves, or to take the plunge into the vortex of uncertain becoming. Here I argue that such world-changing moments should be contextualised through an acknowledgement of academic and historical lineages to better package so-called “unprecedented” events. More potently, I further propose that times of uncertainty influence how people orient to the future where a sense of urgency penetrates the normalised social fabric triggering a form of affective vertigo. In the whirlpool of unforeseen social change, people experience confusion as to where and when they belong on timelines of previously unquestioned pasts and futures, manifested as disorientation and dizziness where pathways to becoming have altered dramatically.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Chronic crisis and the psychosocial in Central Greece

In Central Greece, the 2009/10 economic crisis has lost its eventedness, with crisis becoming a chronic condition with its own set of temporal rhythms and orientations. Even with Greece officially ‘out’ of crisis, local vernaculars of captivity have come to the fore as people relate to lives deemed without a future, feelings of stuckedness, futility, and an intimate uncomfortable comfort with an endemic condition. As the rupture of crisis becomes a chronic state, people report experiencing a form of societal Stockholm Syndrome, a profound familiarity with routinized axiomatic violence. Contributing to emergent debates on chronic crisis, the psychosocial, and the aesthetics of captivity, societal Stockholm Syndrome provides an alternative framework to understand lives trapped in the spin-cycle of seemingly permanent crisis.Publisher PD

The green economy as sustainable alternative?

This article explores the green economy as a sustainable alternative to austerity in Greece. I argue that the movement toward the green economy has been hijacked by multinational corporations taking advantage of austerity-era policy that encourages a repetition of the same neoliberal model of privatization, short-term accumulation, rentier agreements and resource extraction. This is contrary to views that cast 'crisis' as an incubator of economic strategies that may feed green ecological transformations of the economy leading, ultimately, to sustainable growth. Current configurations of advanced capitalist power enable and promote injurious ‘green grabbing’ in part by leveraging the fantasy of a green economy as a solution to the fiscal crisis. As an alternative to austerity the green economy requires further uncoupling from neoliberal business opportunism to allow natural capital to be harnessed as an economic asset for sustainable long-term public good.PostprintPeer reviewe

Activating and inhibiting connections in biological network dynamics

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Many studies of biochemical networks have analyzed network topology. Such work has suggested that specific types of network wiring may increase network robustness and therefore confer a selective advantage. However, knowledge of network topology does not allow one to predict network dynamical behavior – for example, whether deleting a protein from a signaling network would maintain the network's dynamical behavior, or induce oscillations or chaos.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we report that the balance between activating and inhibiting connections is important in determining whether network dynamics reach steady state or oscillate. We use a simple dynamical model of a network of interacting genes or proteins. Using the model, we study random networks, networks selected for robust dynamics, and examples of biological network topologies. The fraction of activating connections influences whether the network dynamics reach steady state or oscillate.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The activating fraction may predispose a network to oscillate or reach steady state, and neutral evolution or selection of this parameter may affect the behavior of biological networks. This principle may unify the dynamics of a wide range of cellular networks.</p> <p>Reviewers</p> <p>Reviewed by Sergei Maslov, Eugene Koonin, and Yu (Brandon) Xia (nominated by Mark Gerstein). For the full reviews, please go to the Reviewers' comments section.</p