Books
Annual series Greek Asylum Service: Miscellaneous writings , 2023
Annual series. Greek Asylum Service miscellaneous writings is a new series created by the Asylum ... more Annual series. Greek Asylum Service miscellaneous writings is a new series created by the Asylum Service, with the participation of researchers, academic professors and Country of Origin Information experts, for the purpose of enhancing our knowledge and understanding on asylum matters. All contents are authentic, previously unpublished, based upon well researched material and subjected to an anonymous peer review process. Every chapter was presented during the Asylum Service monthly tele-meetings, followed by a fruitful discussion which linked academic work to asylum practices. The series is addressed to students, researchers, academics, refugee status determination experts, asylum case officers, policy makers, human rights advocates, members of the appeals authority and judges.
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How can the examination of action groups, such as the one discussed in this book, help to initiat... more How can the examination of action groups, such as the one discussed in this book, help to initiate a discussion of environmental conflicts as societal conflicts? In this work, which is an ethnographic study of a protest born in Istanbul during the late 1990s, the author suggests that the peculiarities of a protest-group should be viewed as social, political and cultural rather than issue-specific. The book offers a close ethnographic examination of the protest, studying it as a product of the particular character of Turkish public life. It illustrates the particular character of the protest itself as a product of the identities evolving, the activities taking place and the community that these have created amidst the struggle. It is a contribution to the anthropology of collective action and brings together recent studies of the anthropology of social movements, environmentalism and urban settings, with wider literature on social movements, civil society and urban studies and anthropological and sociological studies on Turkey.
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Articles in Journals
Current Anthropology, 2021
This article by Maribel Casas-Cortés constitutes a theoretical tour de force on the genealogy of ... more This article by Maribel Casas-Cortés constitutes a theoretical tour de force on the genealogy of the concept of precarity and, thus, a valuable contribution to the flourishing study on the subject from the point of view of “autonomous knowledge production”. It is a piece and product of the critical anthropological thinking that has characterized an ethnographic turn in contemporary social movement studies relevant to the radical imagination project of Haiven and Khasnabish, which seeks to catalyze critical dialogues among activists, members of local communities, and researchers, crafting new spaces of debate, imagination, and creativity.
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Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 2019
Based on ethnographic material produced during the last six years in Greece and Turkey, this pape... more Based on ethnographic material produced during the last six years in Greece and Turkey, this paper will discuss the trajectory of three scholars who sought academic refuge in Turkey to escape the precarity that austerity policies created in their own country, Greece. They were forced out of their jobs, and consequently Turkey, when caught in the middle of the Turkish government’s authoritarian outburst following the failed coup attempt of July 2016. Drawing on approaches that construe precarity as a normality in all labour groups, including academics, and the authoritarianism inflicted on academia as an assault on civil liberties by the regime aimed at preventing academics from mounting a serious challenge to the incumbent, I will try to illustrate two things: (a) that for the cognitariat, precarity that results from austerity policies differs little from precarity that results from authoritarian policies and (b) that structural precarity has the tendency to reproduce itself through the disciplining mechanisms of these two types of governmentality.
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Drawing on ethnographic material from Istanbul prior and during the Gezi uprising of 2013, the pr... more Drawing on ethnographic material from Istanbul prior and during the Gezi uprising of 2013, the present article examines the mass demonstrations that broke out in more than 90 cities in Turkey and lasted for about a month as an event in the sense of the short duration of history (évènement) informed by historical processes of medium length duration (conjoncture) marked by authoritarianism and protest; an event bearing the inevitability of rupture that long-term authoritarianism carries to the present and also the future; a product of a culture of protest traced back to the 1980s and the neoliberal restructuring of the Turkish economy. Furthermore, the paper discusses the rise of the electoral influence of the Democratic People’s Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi - HDP) as a symptom of the same historical conjuncture.
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Περίληψη
Tο παρόν άρθρο επιχειρεί να ερμηνεύσει το βίωμα της στρατιωτικής θητείας δύο νέων ανθρώ... more Περίληψη
Tο παρόν άρθρο επιχειρεί να ερμηνεύσει το βίωμα της στρατιωτικής θητείας δύο νέων ανθρώπων του Μουράτ ο οποίος είναι κάτοικος της δυτικής Θράκης (Κομοτηνή) και του Φατίχ ο οποίος είναι κάτοικος της ανατολικής Θράκης (Ανδριανούπολη – Edirne) και έλληνας πολίτης, ως μία διαβατήρια τελετή η οποία προσδιορίζεται από την έννοια της απόστασης (mesafe) όπως αυτή προκύπτει από τη δράση του ταξιδιού ως γεγονός επανακαθορισμού των συνόρων που διασχίζουν τόσο σε γεωγραφικό όσο και σε κοινωνικό επίπεδο. Με αυτόν τον τρόπο οι συγγραφείς του άρθρου θέλουν να τονίσουν ότι η μελέτη των συνόρων, όπως αυτά βιώνονται από τα δρώντα υποκείμενα/πληροφορητές από ερευνητές εθνογράφους, αποκτά νόημα όχι μόνο μέσα από ιστορικές μακροκοινωνιολογικές προσεγγίσεις αλλά και μέσα από προσεγγίσεις που βασίζονται στις αφηγήσεις καθημερινών ανθρώπων οι οποίες δίνουν περιεχόμενο σε όρους όπως σύνορα, εθνικότητα, ταυτότητα.
Λέξεις κλειδιά: διαβατήρια τελετή, απόσταση, σύνορο, ταξίδι, εθνογραφία, Θράκη
Abstract
The present paper attempts to discuss the experience of military service as narrated by two young people, as a rite of passage. These are Murat, resident of western Thrace (Komotini) and member of the Muslim minority of Greece and Fatih, resident of eastern Thrace (Edirne) of Hellenic nationality and thus obliged to serve in the Greek armed forces. The discussion focuses on the distance (mesafe in Turkish) as it is created by the journey of these two people from their hometown to the town which hosts the military base where they served. By journey we mean not only the geographical distance that it entails but also the social distance created which enables the travelers to redefine the borders that they cross. In this way the authors claim that studying borders and the ways individuals conceive them, is significant not only in terms of historical macro-sociological approaches but also in terms of narratives of lay people who also invest terms such as border, nationality and identity with meanings.
Keywords: rites of passage, distance, border, journey, ethnography, Thrace
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In Istanbul during the late 1990s a mobilisation opposed the construction of a third bridge over ... more In Istanbul during the late 1990s a mobilisation opposed the construction of a third bridge over the Bosphorus Strait to connect the Asian with the European shores of the city. The residents of one of two neighbourhoods over which the bridge would be placed, organised an Arnavutköy District Initiative – ASG (Arnavutköy Semt Girişimi) – claiming that the construction of the bridge would have destructive effects on the natural and cultural environment of the area. The environment is one of the central arguments around which the anti-bridge campaign revolves but closer ethnographic examination reveals that ASG is much more than an environmental group. Therefore, ASG is analysed as a transenvironmental protest, through the consideration of environmentalism as a cultural characteristic appropriated by the setting of which ASG is part. Furthermore, the transenvironmental character of ASG is discussed in relation to its activities, which render it more than a protest but also a community organisation.
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Οι συγκρούσεις που έχουν περιβαλλοντικές διαστάσεις αποτελούν ένα συχνό φαινόμενο στη σύγχρονη Το... more Οι συγκρούσεις που έχουν περιβαλλοντικές διαστάσεις αποτελούν ένα συχνό φαινόμενο στη σύγχρονη Τουρκία. Αποτελέσματα τέτοιων συγκρούσεων είναι οι μεγάλες κινητοποιήσεις εναντίον της κατασκευής υδροηλεκτρικών φραγμάτων στη Νοτιοανατολική Τουρκία, η κινητοποίηση στην Πέργαμο που στρεφόταν κατά της λειτουργίας ενός χρυσωρυχείου, καθώς και η κινητοποίηση εναντίον της κατασκευής μιας γέφυρας στο Βόσπορο της Κωνσταντινούπολης. Σύμφωνα με τους συμμετέχοντες σε τέτοιες κινητοποιήσεις, οι λόγοι που παρακινούν στην αντίδραση τους σχετίζονται με τα καταστρεπτικά αποτελέσματα που η κατασκευή τέτοιων έργων θα έχει στο φυσικό και πολιτισμικό πλούτο των περιοχών τους, καθώς και στη ζωή των κατοίκων τους. Επιπλέον, ωστόσο, με τις κινητοποιήσεις αυτές ασκείται κριτική στον τρόπο που λαμβάνονται οι πολιτικές αποφάσεις στο επίπεδο της κεντρικής πολιτικής και τίθεται το ζήτημα ποιος έχει δικαίωμα να αποφασίζει τι. H παρούσα εργασία, που στηρίζεται στη διεξαγωγή επιτόπιας έρευνας, εστιάζει στην ανάλυση αυτών των κινητοποιήσεων τις οποίες αντιλαμβάνεται ως συλλογικές δράσεις που δρουν στη σφαίρα της δημόσιας ζωής (public life), δίδοντας ιδιαίτερη έμφαση στην πρωτοβουλία κατά της κατασκευής της γέφυρας στο Βόσπορο.
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The present work constitutes an analysis of environmental protests in Turkey. Based on 18 months ... more The present work constitutes an analysis of environmental protests in Turkey. Based on 18 months of fieldwork my research suggests that globalisation, through economic liberalisation and media globalisation has affected Turkish activism. Turkish environmental groups are globally informed organisations - through the changes in information technology, world order and the challenge to national sovereignty (Williams 2003) - and are themselves part of, what Hannerz (1996) calls, ‘global interconnectedness’. In other words, they are part of “social economic and demographic processes that not only take place within nations but also transcend them in a way that attention limited to local processes, identities and units of analysis yields incomplete understanding of the local” (Kearney 1995: 547). Besides, environmentalism in developing countries has been influenced - or dominated (Argyrou 2005) – by ideas derived from developed nations through global civil society and the world media (Ignatow 2008). These points suggest that an examination of Turkish environmental groups should not treat them as specifically Turkish groups. As Ahmet Öncü and Gürcan Koçan (2001) write, globalisation is characterised by
the possibilities of the market in a worldwide level and thus, the political and cultural social process of globalisationmust be seen in relation to the logic these possibilities reinforce. This means that supra-national economic powers
dominate in the arena of social rights which in turn results in pressure from citizens whose rights are being
overlooked. These citizens organise themselves in groups with a transnational character since the forces they
oppose to are also transnational. In the Turkish context, the example of the various environmental groups confirms
this tactic (Şimşek 2004).
Key words: Turkey, Environmental Protests,Transnationalism, ASG, Bergama protest, The İlisu Dam Case, The Akkuyu Resistance
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The present article presents an anthropological study of an urban protest group in a neighbourhoo... more The present article presents an anthropological study of an urban protest group in a neighbourhood of Istanbul, Turkey. The mobilisation began following the announcement of plans for the construction of a third (added to the two already existing bridges) bridge over the Bosphorus Strait which would connect the Asian with the European shores of Istanbul. In opposition to the construction of the bridge, the residents of the European neighbourhood (Arnavutköy) in which foundations of the bridge would be placed organised an initiative called Arnavutköy District Initiative – in Turkish ASG (Arnavutköy Semt Girişimi). After a brief presentation of the city‟s development projects, the article focuses on the fact that the changes that took place in Istanbul were “beyond ordinary people‟s control” which, I propose, is the key to understand the opposition against the construction of the Third Bosphorus Bridge. More than that, the article suggests that ASG is an urban group the particular character of which is formed by the identities of the individual participants, the people with roots in Arnavutköy (active participants, less-active participants, non-active participants) and the supporters with sympathies rooted in the ideals of the ASG.
Keywords: ASG, Third Bridge, Istanbul, active participants, less-active participants, non-active participants, supporters of ASG, urban protest.
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The present article attempts to explore the use of “mild” psychotropic drugs by women in a provin... more The present article attempts to explore the use of “mild” psychotropic drugs by women in a provincial city of Greece, using the analytical took of gender as it has been discussed in the context of the ethnography of Greece. Based on research concerning the family medicine chest which lasted for over a year, on general observations, interviews with women users of psychotropic drugs as well as on their perceptions of such drugs, the present analysis discusses, through the analytical prism of gender, the processes of
use of psychotropic substances: the beginning, the attachment to the drugs and the efforts to stop the use.
Key words: gender, pshychotropic drugs, ethnography of Greece, women and mental health.
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Chapters in edited volumes
Τσιμπιρίδου Φωτεινή (επιμέλεια) Εθνογραφία και Καθημερινότητα στην Καθ' ημάς Ανατολή. Εκδόσεις Κριτική, 2020
The region of Central Anatolia (Orta Anadolu) in Turkey with its metropolis Kayseri, seem to clai... more The region of Central Anatolia (Orta Anadolu) in Turkey with its metropolis Kayseri, seem to claim the seal of a new lifestyle in Turkey that combines business with the religious conservatism of the New Islamic worldview. The following chapter, discusses how the Islamic morality of neo-liberal Turkey promoted by current rulers, is experienced as a virtue and way of life in the heartland of Turkey. It is based on a two-year ethnographic research in the city of Kayseri and attempts to capture the characteristics of the Neo-Islamic ethics that run through the routines and everyday politics of the Turks, especially those born after the 1980s. The latter while being crystallized as a neo-Islamatic virtue and a neo-liberal lifestyle is traced back in the early 1930s and the early republican period.
Η Καισάρεια ως μητρόπολη και η ευρύτερη περιοχή της Κεντρικής Ανατολίας (Orta Anadolu) φαίνεται να διεκδικούν τη σφραγίδα ενός νέου τρόπου ζωής στην Τουρκία που συνδυάζει την επιχειρηματική δραστηριότητα με τον θρησκευτικό συντηρητισμό της νέο-ισλαμικής κοσμοθεωρίας. Το κεφάλαιο που ακολουθεί συζητά το πως η ισλαμική ηθική της νεοφιλελεύθερης Τουρκίας την οποία προάγουν οι σημερινοί κυβερνώντες, βιώνεται ως αρετή και τρόπος ζωής στην ενδοχώρα της Τουρκίας. Βασίζεται σε εθνογραφική έρευνα δύο ετών στην πόλη της Καισάρειας με στόχο να αποτυπώσουμε τα χαρακτηριστικά της νέο-ισλαμικής ηθικής που διατρέχει τις συνήθειες και τις πολιτικές της καθημερινότητας των Τούρκων, κυρίως αυτών που γεννήθηκαν μετά τη δεκαετία του 1980. Η τελευταία ενώ αποκρυσταλλώνεται ως νεοϊσλαμική αρετή και νεοφιλελεύθερο lifestyle έλκει τη γενεαλογία της από τις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 1930, την πρώιμη ρεπουμπλικανική περίοδο της Τουρκικής Δημοκρατίας.
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Global Information Society Watch, 2018
This 2018 edition of GISWatch focuses primarily on community-owned networks for the provision of ... more This 2018 edition of GISWatch focuses primarily on community-owned networks for the provision of physical communications infrastructure.
Affordable and reliable internet access infrastructure has become a vital means of communication and access to information, to exercise fundamental human rights and to support economic, social and human development. However, as the internet becomes more ubiquitous, less is being heard from those who are unconnected –the less wealthy and more marginalised – who are unable to exercise their rights on the same footing. Those who do not have access are doubly excluded: excluded from the “new” world of information and communications that the internet delivers, and also excluded from the “old” analogue world they used to have access to – even if imperfectly – because so many of those services and opportunities are increasingly only available online. Ending digital exclusion is not simply a matter of improving the coverage of mobile broadband services, but also of improving the affordability and coverage of both fixed and mobile local network infrastructures and services, along with building the technical and human capacity to ensure reliability, the ability to deploy low-cost and open-access locally owned network infrastructures, and the ability to use the resulting connectivity in applications and content of local interest and benefit to local communities.
The 2018 edition of GISWatch focuses on local access models, specifically, community networks as self-organised, self-managed or locally developed solutions for local access, based on the conviction that one of the keys to affordable access is giving local people the skills and tools to solve their own connectivity challenges. Instead of buying an access service from a large corporate entity, community networks allow community members to self-provide and share infrastructure.
The 43 country reports included in this year's Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) capture the different experiences and approaches in setting up community networks across the globe. They show that key ideas, such as participatory governance systems, community ownership and skills transfer, as well as the “do-it-yourself” spirit that drives community networks in many different contexts, are characteristics that lend them a shared purpose and approach.
The country reports are framed by eight thematic reports that deal with critical issues such as the regulatory framework necessary to support community networks, sustainability, local content, feminist infrastructure and community networks, and the importance of being aware of “community stories” and the power structures embedded in those stories.
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Erdoğan’s ‘New’ Turkey: Attempted Coup d’état and the Acceleration of Political Crisis, 2019
Focusing on the days and weeks following the 15 July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey and based on inf... more Focusing on the days and weeks following the 15 July 2016 coup attempt in Turkey and based on informal discussions and participant observation, this chapter tries to make sense of the overwhelming mood of my interlocutors and myself, by describing the trajectory of their emotions from denial to uncertainty and anxiety and finally denial again. In doing this, my aim as an anthropologist focusing on living social actors who are trying to cope with such an overwhelming state is to stress that a coup d’état (even a failed one) feels exactly like what the term describes in its language of origin, that is, a ‘coup’, a blow, a hit, like a punch in the face that affects every possible expression of public and private life. This is what I will try to describe, albeit inevitably only partly, by engaging in an auto-ethnographic style insofar as I found myself in an affective state to a certain extent very similar to that of my informants, concluding that the affective response of my interlocutors functioned as a mechanism for remaining sovereign over oneself but also as a way of reproducing the state.
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by Fotini Tsibiridou, Eftihia Voutira, Aimilia Voulvouli, Raymond Detrez, lambros baltsiotis, Dimitris A Kerkinos, Brunilda Zenelaga, Lyubomir Georgiev, Marica Rombou-Levidi, Anna Apostolidou, Αριστείδης Σγατζός, Georgios Mavrommatis, Maria Koumarianou, and Panos Hatziprokopiou Selective texts from the Proceedings of the International Conference Organized by the Department ... more Selective texts from the Proceedings of the International Conference Organized by the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies (University of Macedonia-Thessaloniki) in collaboration with Via Egnatia Fountation, organized on the 24th, 25th and 26th of February 2011.
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Tο παρόν άρθρο επιχειρεί να ερμηνεύσει το βίωμα της στρατιωτικής θητείας δύο νέων ανθρώπων του Μουράτ ο οποίος είναι κάτοικος της δυτικής Θράκης (Κομοτηνή) και του Φατίχ ο οποίος είναι κάτοικος της ανατολικής Θράκης (Ανδριανούπολη – Edirne) και έλληνας πολίτης, ως μία διαβατήρια τελετή η οποία προσδιορίζεται από την έννοια της απόστασης (mesafe) όπως αυτή προκύπτει από τη δράση του ταξιδιού ως γεγονός επανακαθορισμού των συνόρων που διασχίζουν τόσο σε γεωγραφικό όσο και σε κοινωνικό επίπεδο. Με αυτόν τον τρόπο οι συγγραφείς του άρθρου θέλουν να τονίσουν ότι η μελέτη των συνόρων, όπως αυτά βιώνονται από τα δρώντα υποκείμενα/πληροφορητές από ερευνητές εθνογράφους, αποκτά νόημα όχι μόνο μέσα από ιστορικές μακροκοινωνιολογικές προσεγγίσεις αλλά και μέσα από προσεγγίσεις που βασίζονται στις αφηγήσεις καθημερινών ανθρώπων οι οποίες δίνουν περιεχόμενο σε όρους όπως σύνορα, εθνικότητα, ταυτότητα.
Λέξεις κλειδιά: διαβατήρια τελετή, απόσταση, σύνορο, ταξίδι, εθνογραφία, Θράκη
Abstract
The present paper attempts to discuss the experience of military service as narrated by two young people, as a rite of passage. These are Murat, resident of western Thrace (Komotini) and member of the Muslim minority of Greece and Fatih, resident of eastern Thrace (Edirne) of Hellenic nationality and thus obliged to serve in the Greek armed forces. The discussion focuses on the distance (mesafe in Turkish) as it is created by the journey of these two people from their hometown to the town which hosts the military base where they served. By journey we mean not only the geographical distance that it entails but also the social distance created which enables the travelers to redefine the borders that they cross. In this way the authors claim that studying borders and the ways individuals conceive them, is significant not only in terms of historical macro-sociological approaches but also in terms of narratives of lay people who also invest terms such as border, nationality and identity with meanings.
Keywords: rites of passage, distance, border, journey, ethnography, Thrace
the possibilities of the market in a worldwide level and thus, the political and cultural social process of globalisationmust be seen in relation to the logic these possibilities reinforce. This means that supra-national economic powers
dominate in the arena of social rights which in turn results in pressure from citizens whose rights are being
overlooked. These citizens organise themselves in groups with a transnational character since the forces they
oppose to are also transnational. In the Turkish context, the example of the various environmental groups confirms
this tactic (Şimşek 2004).
Key words: Turkey, Environmental Protests,Transnationalism, ASG, Bergama protest, The İlisu Dam Case, The Akkuyu Resistance
Keywords: ASG, Third Bridge, Istanbul, active participants, less-active participants, non-active participants, supporters of ASG, urban protest.
use of psychotropic substances: the beginning, the attachment to the drugs and the efforts to stop the use.
Key words: gender, pshychotropic drugs, ethnography of Greece, women and mental health.
Η Καισάρεια ως μητρόπολη και η ευρύτερη περιοχή της Κεντρικής Ανατολίας (Orta Anadolu) φαίνεται να διεκδικούν τη σφραγίδα ενός νέου τρόπου ζωής στην Τουρκία που συνδυάζει την επιχειρηματική δραστηριότητα με τον θρησκευτικό συντηρητισμό της νέο-ισλαμικής κοσμοθεωρίας. Το κεφάλαιο που ακολουθεί συζητά το πως η ισλαμική ηθική της νεοφιλελεύθερης Τουρκίας την οποία προάγουν οι σημερινοί κυβερνώντες, βιώνεται ως αρετή και τρόπος ζωής στην ενδοχώρα της Τουρκίας. Βασίζεται σε εθνογραφική έρευνα δύο ετών στην πόλη της Καισάρειας με στόχο να αποτυπώσουμε τα χαρακτηριστικά της νέο-ισλαμικής ηθικής που διατρέχει τις συνήθειες και τις πολιτικές της καθημερινότητας των Τούρκων, κυρίως αυτών που γεννήθηκαν μετά τη δεκαετία του 1980. Η τελευταία ενώ αποκρυσταλλώνεται ως νεοϊσλαμική αρετή και νεοφιλελεύθερο lifestyle έλκει τη γενεαλογία της από τις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 1930, την πρώιμη ρεπουμπλικανική περίοδο της Τουρκικής Δημοκρατίας.
Affordable and reliable internet access infrastructure has become a vital means of communication and access to information, to exercise fundamental human rights and to support economic, social and human development. However, as the internet becomes more ubiquitous, less is being heard from those who are unconnected –the less wealthy and more marginalised – who are unable to exercise their rights on the same footing. Those who do not have access are doubly excluded: excluded from the “new” world of information and communications that the internet delivers, and also excluded from the “old” analogue world they used to have access to – even if imperfectly – because so many of those services and opportunities are increasingly only available online. Ending digital exclusion is not simply a matter of improving the coverage of mobile broadband services, but also of improving the affordability and coverage of both fixed and mobile local network infrastructures and services, along with building the technical and human capacity to ensure reliability, the ability to deploy low-cost and open-access locally owned network infrastructures, and the ability to use the resulting connectivity in applications and content of local interest and benefit to local communities.
The 2018 edition of GISWatch focuses on local access models, specifically, community networks as self-organised, self-managed or locally developed solutions for local access, based on the conviction that one of the keys to affordable access is giving local people the skills and tools to solve their own connectivity challenges. Instead of buying an access service from a large corporate entity, community networks allow community members to self-provide and share infrastructure.
The 43 country reports included in this year's Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) capture the different experiences and approaches in setting up community networks across the globe. They show that key ideas, such as participatory governance systems, community ownership and skills transfer, as well as the “do-it-yourself” spirit that drives community networks in many different contexts, are characteristics that lend them a shared purpose and approach.
The country reports are framed by eight thematic reports that deal with critical issues such as the regulatory framework necessary to support community networks, sustainability, local content, feminist infrastructure and community networks, and the importance of being aware of “community stories” and the power structures embedded in those stories.
Tο παρόν άρθρο επιχειρεί να ερμηνεύσει το βίωμα της στρατιωτικής θητείας δύο νέων ανθρώπων του Μουράτ ο οποίος είναι κάτοικος της δυτικής Θράκης (Κομοτηνή) και του Φατίχ ο οποίος είναι κάτοικος της ανατολικής Θράκης (Ανδριανούπολη – Edirne) και έλληνας πολίτης, ως μία διαβατήρια τελετή η οποία προσδιορίζεται από την έννοια της απόστασης (mesafe) όπως αυτή προκύπτει από τη δράση του ταξιδιού ως γεγονός επανακαθορισμού των συνόρων που διασχίζουν τόσο σε γεωγραφικό όσο και σε κοινωνικό επίπεδο. Με αυτόν τον τρόπο οι συγγραφείς του άρθρου θέλουν να τονίσουν ότι η μελέτη των συνόρων, όπως αυτά βιώνονται από τα δρώντα υποκείμενα/πληροφορητές από ερευνητές εθνογράφους, αποκτά νόημα όχι μόνο μέσα από ιστορικές μακροκοινωνιολογικές προσεγγίσεις αλλά και μέσα από προσεγγίσεις που βασίζονται στις αφηγήσεις καθημερινών ανθρώπων οι οποίες δίνουν περιεχόμενο σε όρους όπως σύνορα, εθνικότητα, ταυτότητα.
Λέξεις κλειδιά: διαβατήρια τελετή, απόσταση, σύνορο, ταξίδι, εθνογραφία, Θράκη
Abstract
The present paper attempts to discuss the experience of military service as narrated by two young people, as a rite of passage. These are Murat, resident of western Thrace (Komotini) and member of the Muslim minority of Greece and Fatih, resident of eastern Thrace (Edirne) of Hellenic nationality and thus obliged to serve in the Greek armed forces. The discussion focuses on the distance (mesafe in Turkish) as it is created by the journey of these two people from their hometown to the town which hosts the military base where they served. By journey we mean not only the geographical distance that it entails but also the social distance created which enables the travelers to redefine the borders that they cross. In this way the authors claim that studying borders and the ways individuals conceive them, is significant not only in terms of historical macro-sociological approaches but also in terms of narratives of lay people who also invest terms such as border, nationality and identity with meanings.
Keywords: rites of passage, distance, border, journey, ethnography, Thrace
the possibilities of the market in a worldwide level and thus, the political and cultural social process of globalisationmust be seen in relation to the logic these possibilities reinforce. This means that supra-national economic powers
dominate in the arena of social rights which in turn results in pressure from citizens whose rights are being
overlooked. These citizens organise themselves in groups with a transnational character since the forces they
oppose to are also transnational. In the Turkish context, the example of the various environmental groups confirms
this tactic (Şimşek 2004).
Key words: Turkey, Environmental Protests,Transnationalism, ASG, Bergama protest, The İlisu Dam Case, The Akkuyu Resistance
Keywords: ASG, Third Bridge, Istanbul, active participants, less-active participants, non-active participants, supporters of ASG, urban protest.
use of psychotropic substances: the beginning, the attachment to the drugs and the efforts to stop the use.
Key words: gender, pshychotropic drugs, ethnography of Greece, women and mental health.
Η Καισάρεια ως μητρόπολη και η ευρύτερη περιοχή της Κεντρικής Ανατολίας (Orta Anadolu) φαίνεται να διεκδικούν τη σφραγίδα ενός νέου τρόπου ζωής στην Τουρκία που συνδυάζει την επιχειρηματική δραστηριότητα με τον θρησκευτικό συντηρητισμό της νέο-ισλαμικής κοσμοθεωρίας. Το κεφάλαιο που ακολουθεί συζητά το πως η ισλαμική ηθική της νεοφιλελεύθερης Τουρκίας την οποία προάγουν οι σημερινοί κυβερνώντες, βιώνεται ως αρετή και τρόπος ζωής στην ενδοχώρα της Τουρκίας. Βασίζεται σε εθνογραφική έρευνα δύο ετών στην πόλη της Καισάρειας με στόχο να αποτυπώσουμε τα χαρακτηριστικά της νέο-ισλαμικής ηθικής που διατρέχει τις συνήθειες και τις πολιτικές της καθημερινότητας των Τούρκων, κυρίως αυτών που γεννήθηκαν μετά τη δεκαετία του 1980. Η τελευταία ενώ αποκρυσταλλώνεται ως νεοϊσλαμική αρετή και νεοφιλελεύθερο lifestyle έλκει τη γενεαλογία της από τις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 1930, την πρώιμη ρεπουμπλικανική περίοδο της Τουρκικής Δημοκρατίας.
Affordable and reliable internet access infrastructure has become a vital means of communication and access to information, to exercise fundamental human rights and to support economic, social and human development. However, as the internet becomes more ubiquitous, less is being heard from those who are unconnected –the less wealthy and more marginalised – who are unable to exercise their rights on the same footing. Those who do not have access are doubly excluded: excluded from the “new” world of information and communications that the internet delivers, and also excluded from the “old” analogue world they used to have access to – even if imperfectly – because so many of those services and opportunities are increasingly only available online. Ending digital exclusion is not simply a matter of improving the coverage of mobile broadband services, but also of improving the affordability and coverage of both fixed and mobile local network infrastructures and services, along with building the technical and human capacity to ensure reliability, the ability to deploy low-cost and open-access locally owned network infrastructures, and the ability to use the resulting connectivity in applications and content of local interest and benefit to local communities.
The 2018 edition of GISWatch focuses on local access models, specifically, community networks as self-organised, self-managed or locally developed solutions for local access, based on the conviction that one of the keys to affordable access is giving local people the skills and tools to solve their own connectivity challenges. Instead of buying an access service from a large corporate entity, community networks allow community members to self-provide and share infrastructure.
The 43 country reports included in this year's Global Information Society Watch (GISWatch) capture the different experiences and approaches in setting up community networks across the globe. They show that key ideas, such as participatory governance systems, community ownership and skills transfer, as well as the “do-it-yourself” spirit that drives community networks in many different contexts, are characteristics that lend them a shared purpose and approach.
The country reports are framed by eight thematic reports that deal with critical issues such as the regulatory framework necessary to support community networks, sustainability, local content, feminist infrastructure and community networks, and the importance of being aware of “community stories” and the power structures embedded in those stories.
Urban and Regional Social Movements
Aπρίλιος 2016, Θεσσαλονίκη, σ. 488, ISBN 978-618-82533-0-8
April 2016, Thessaloniki, 488 p., ISBN 978-618-82533-0-8
Επιµέλεια/ Editors
Κρίστη (Χρυσάνθη) Πετροπούλου / Christy (Chryssanthi) Petropoulou
Αθηνά Βιτοπούλου / Athina Vitopoulou
Χαράλαµπος Τσαβδάρογλου/ Charalampos Tsavdaroglou
Ερευνητική Οµάδα / Research Group
Αόρατες Πόλεις / Invisible Cities
Νο Copyright
Αναφορά ∆ηµιουργού
CC BY
poleisaorates@gmail.com
http://aoratespoleis.wordpress.com
“Arnavutköy is my home. Now when we finish (our conversation) I am going to go back to Arnavutköy and I feel very happy there. I walk very happily in the streets, I run early in the morning along the coast, I go to my barber and we chat a lot and he says: “why didn’t you come? It’s been a long time since I last saw you!”. That sort of thing, it’s my life. And like everybody else I would like to protect my life with the best possible means I have. That’s why I fight. I am a school teacher by accident. I am Arnavutköylü first and then a school teacher. And it happens that the school I work in is not very far from Arnavutköy! But the important thing is that I would like to save the life and the world that I love”.
In this sense, place, in this case Arnavutköy, assumes a material aspect through which the residents of the neighbourhood negotiate their identity, culture and their locality providing for an excellent example to discuss issues of power relationships between people and the state, individual, collectve and local identities.
Among other difficulties, misconceptions remain about what may qualify as a ‘political opinion’. In addition, of key importance, and something that is often overlooked, is the actor of persecution’s perception of what constitutes a political opinion and the political opinions imputed to the applicant. It is also not an easy task for case officers to identify the relevant topics to explore or elements to consider depending on the general context in the country of origin and the personal circumstances of an applicant who relies on (imputed) political opinions in their asylum claim. the identification of the nexus between the feared act of persecution and the ground of political opinion raises its own challenges. these are but a few of the difficulties faced.
Against this background, the aim of this practical guide is to provide case officers with a framework for the examination of applications for international protection based on political opinion.
In this context, we are organising an international workshop of the project entitled #otheranthrpolitics to be held in Volos on 15th – 16th of April. The event is co-organized and hosted by the Department of Social Anthropology History and Social Anthropology of the University of Thessaly with the participation of researchers and volunteering and institutional activists.
Organising Committee: Aimilia Voulvouli, Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Penelope Papailias, Petros Petridis, Maria Deligannidou
If you are on Facebook, you can find more information about the workshop at https://www.facebook.com/events/282386455993154/
How do the Commons emerge as everyday politics?
How do the Commons differ from bureaucratic state policies?
How do the subjectivities of participants emerge and get transformed in the contexts of such endeavours?
How do participants understand their role in the endeavour and in the wider society they belong to?
You can read the full interviews (in Greek) here.
Video recordings of all sessions of the conference, from 13/09/2017 till 15/09/2017, are available at http://heteropolitics.net/index.php/2017/09/20/video-recordings-from- heteropoltics -international-workshop-13-15-September-2017/
Emerging community initiatives that self-organise around common endeavours such as social economy initiatives, civic engagement in municipal politics, digital networks, communities of migrants and solidarity groups that self-organise to face the defects of official migrant policy realise and propose different paradigms of political engagement. Based on principles of self-reconstruction and self-governance, such communities practice alternative politics that revolve around shared/common resources, produced and managed by the community itself. At the same time, they engage in knowledge production around alternative notions of the political.
Our panel aims at exploring ethnographic engagement with such 'alter-political' communities. Our aspiration is to contribute to the emerging field of the anthropology of the commons but also to address the wider ethnographic literature on alternative politics with a radical democratic potential. We seek contributions examining the character and the practices of collective action which revolves around shared resources and promotes alternative politics beyond the established mainstream political and market apparatus. Key questions to be tackled include, among others:
- How can we articulate already existing anthropological knowledge of collective action with fieldwork on the commons?
- How do people, involved in such practices, understand 'the political'?
- Which modus vivendi and forms of subjectivity are unfolding in the context of such collectivities?
- Which political strategies are being developed?
- How is the collective subject constituted through practices and knowledge production in the framework of such groups?
- How does contemporary anthropological literature on alternative politics renew our understanding of the political?
- How do contemporary ethnographies of political processes problematize or stimulate and enrich political theory?
Video recordings of all sessions of the conference, from 13/09/2017 till 15/09/2017, are available at http://heteropolitics.net/index.php/2017/09/20/video-recordings-from- heteropoltics -international-workshop-13-15-September-2017/
Main Authors: Alexandros Kioupkiolis, Natalia-Rozalia Avlona
My post in Heteropolitics is that of Post-doctoral Fellow,, responsible for conducting ethnography with self-organised communities and their commoning practices in Greece.
From 13 to 15 September 2017, we are organizing the first international workshop of the project in Thessaloniki.
CALL FOR PAPERS
The Cooperative Institute for Transnational Studies in collaboration with the University of Aegean (Laboratory EKNEXA-Department of Sociology) announce the world conference
Crossing borders
Lesvos, 7-10th July
Contested Borderscapes
Transnational Geographies vis-à-vis Fortress Europe
September 28 – October 1, 2017
International Conference
Mytilene, Lesvos (Greece)
Urban Geography and Planning Laboratory,
“Invisible Cities” research team & Population Movements Laboratory
Department of Geography, University of the Aegean
http://www.contested-borderscapes.net
Uncovering Harms: States, corporations and organizations as criminals
31 August – 3 September, Mytilene, Lesbos, Greece
Organised by
European Group for the Study of Deviance and Social Control University of the Aegean (Laboratory EKNEXA- Department of Sociology)
Scientific Committee:
Stratos Georgoulas, Ida Nafstad, Samantha Fletcher, Aimilia Voulvouli, Georgios Papanikolaou, Christina Pantazis, Simon Pemberton, Victoria Canning, Alejandro Forero Cuéllar, Daniel jimenez Franco, Ignasi Bernat, Robert Jones, David Scott
Organizing Committee:
Stratos Georgoulas, Ida Nafstad, Christos Kouroutzas, Dimitris Paraskevopoulos, Kostas Ganotis, Kanlis Paraschos
Secretariat:
Elizaveta Mourzidou, Anastasia Tsakaloglou, Kostas Leros, Maria Apostolou, Vasiliki Laxana, Paraskevi Ouzounoglou, Triada Dimatsa, Maria Tzanaki, Kontelis Stathis, Eleftherios Kolokouras, Kolokouras Nikolaos, Salomidis Charis
In this panel, we are aiming to expand and nuance conventional meanings of precarity, pointing towards a condition and ethics of mobile precarity in late capitalism. We welcome papers that ethnographically emphasize the itinerant, ambivalent and uncertain character of daily life at the heart of the platform economy, addressing the following questions: What are the defining characteristics of gig economy work compared to other precarious jobs? What kind of transformations are taking place in the field of subjectivities? Who are the subjects that embody them and what are their life trajectories? What strategies of care do they deploy in the workplace and in everyday life? How do they engage affectively with their work? What are their tactics of resistance and alternative politics or 'commoning' and how do they express and materialize them?