RGS-IBG Conference, Edinburgh 3rd – 5th July 2012
Call for Papers:
Writing and doing human geography research in Greece during a turbulent decade: From the ‘relative security’ of fragmented neoliberalization to the ‘insecurity’ of the Greek debt crisis
Mr Lazaros Karaliotas Lazaros.karaliotas@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
Mr Georgios Tzimas Georgios.Tzimas@postgrad.manchester.ac.uk
School of Environment and Development, University of Manchester.
Since the late 1990s, the Greek government embarked in a contradictory and contingent process of partially applying – under the notion of modernizing the country up to 2004 and under the notion of re-establishing the state up to 2009 by the succeeding government – a series of neoliberal policies that included the development of mega-events and mega-projects, the privatization of public services, the introduction of PFIs, the reform of the Greek educational, healthcare and welfare systems and the reorganization of national, regional and local governance towards a smaller but centralized state. These policies, along with a series of phenomena that affected Greece during that decade, such as the influx of global migration flows, the restructuring of the Greek economy and the Athens December riots in 2008; led to radical changes to the economic, political, social and cultural environment of the country. The emergence of the global recession in 2008 and the subsequent Greek debt crisis has led to the implementation of a structural adjustment program since 2010, that has introduced a new series of radical changes in the Greek society. This session seeks to examine Greece as an area of human geography research in a twofold way. Firstly, it provides a space for presenting research that addresses particular aspects of the processes of neoliberalization that unfolded in Greece since the late 1990s. Secondly, it attempts to interrogate theoretical and methodological issues of doing human geography research within an insecure and unstable context such as the Greek one. We welcome theoretically and empirically informed papers that address the following:
- Theorizing the form and role of the Greek state since the late 1990s.
- The implementation, of neoliberal polices and the restructuring of economy in Greece before and during the ‘Greek debt crisis’.
- Social and cultural transformations of the Greek society, particularly issues related to class, gender, identity, consumption culture and cultural representation.
- Urban restructuring and gentrification in Greek cities since the late 1990s and their inter-linkages with neo-liberal policies.
- Global migration flows and their impacts in Greece at a local, national and transnational scale.
- Geographies of resistance, and social movements during the austerity period in Greece.
- Constructing theoretical frameworks for writing human geography research in Greece: Between the dominance of the Anglophone discourse and the adoption of local alternative theories.
- Conducting human geography research in Greece: Research methodologies and issues for studying a society under political and economic insecurity.