The Developmental Trajectory of the Greek State

2020 ◽  
pp. 22-37
Author(s):  
Stathis N. Kalyvas
Keyword(s):  
Historical Development ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Developmental Trajectory ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Peripheral Position ◽  
Economic Boom ◽  
Early Late ◽  
Of Greece

Greece’s historical development gives credence to two competing narratives. The first identifies Greece as a small and vulnerable nation, one marked by crises and failure. The second narrative acknowledges the success of nation-building—indeed, the metamorphosis of Greece—having come through exceptional challenges. To reconcile these two narratives, I draw upon neo-Marxist political economy—which stresses its ‘semi-peripheral’ position in the global economy—and build on recent studies that focus more on the domestic institutional constraints on development. I disaggregate Modern Greek history into seven, intertwined, political and economic ‘boom, bust, and bailout’ cycles. Greece is an ‘early late modernizer’, to borrow Seymour Martin Lipset’s formulation. As one of the early ‘new nations’ on the European stage, Greece attempted a number of highly visible and risky modernization leaps intended to reduce the gap that separated it from the more advanced states of the continent. Predictably, these leaps and their failures attracted considerable global attention, way out of proportion to the country’s size, resources, or strategic importance. They did so due to the perception that its modernization effort was deeply intertwined with processes of much broader historical and global significance; the stakes were high, hence the need for some sort of intervention. That these foreign interventions ultimately turned out to be favourable to Greece should not detract from the fact that they were often perceived negatively in Greece. The recent debt crisis is part of a similar pattern and a Greek recovery would validate this interpretation.

scholarly journals The “Wretched of Europe”

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 102-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anastasia Christou
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
The Public ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Cultural Codes ◽  
Current Context ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
The Public Sphere ◽  
Of Greece

This article focuses on narratives of the crisis in contemporary Greece and aims to understand the current context of austerity as a trope, symbolic signifier, and construct of inequality beyond austerity and in its manifestation as new social morphology in Europe. While the future recovery of Greece will require an extensive understanding of both economic and historical narratives which have sustained and fueled the Modern Greek state, a deeper analysis of structural and societal cultural codes mirrored in the public sphere is paramount in comprehending the cultural politics of inequalities in academic and public discourse. In a changing political and social environment, youth in Greece face the consequences of the debt crisis and, at the same time, reexamine their identity, values, and aspirations. Drawing from narrative, visual, and ethnographic data, this article explores stories of the crisis in grounding an account of inequality as narrated by those experiencing dispossession and austerity.

Languages, Identities and Cultural Transfers

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Complex Formation ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Greek Language ◽  
Vernacular Literature ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Human Aspects ◽  
Modern Greece ◽  
Of Greece ◽  
Cultural Transfers

What was the perception of Greece in Europe during the later nineteenth century, when the attraction of romantic philhellenism had waned? This volume focuses on the reception of medieval and modern Greece in the European press, rigorously analysing journals and newspapers published in England, France, Germany, Italy, and The Netherlands. The essays here suggest that reactions to the Greek state's progress and irredentist desires were followed among the European intelligentsia. Concurrently, new scholarship on the historical development of the Greek language and vernacular literature enhanced the image of medieval and modern Greece. This volume's contributors consider the press's role in this Europe-wide exchange of ideas, explore the links between romantic and late philhellenism and highlight the scholarly nature of the latter. Moreover, they highlight the human aspects of cultural transfers by focusing on networks of mediators, publishers and scholarly collaborators. This context enhances our understanding of both the creation of Hellenic studies and the complex formation of the modern Greek identity.

Radiocarbon Dating of Aghios Antonios, Potos, and Intersite Chronological Variability in South Thasos, Greece

Radiocarbon ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 57 (5) ◽  
pp. 807-823 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yannis Maniatis ◽  
Nerantzis Nerantzis ◽  
Stratis Papadopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
Northern Greece ◽  
Population Movements ◽  
Radiocarbon Dates ◽  
The North ◽  
Chronological Sequence ◽  
Hilltop Settlement ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
Early Late ◽  
Of Greece

Radiocarbon dates obtained for the coastal hilltop settlement of Aghios Antonios Potos in south Thasos are statistically treated to define the absolute chronology for the start and the end of the various habitation and cultural phases at the site. The location was first occupied during the Final Neolithic (FN) between 3800 and 3600 BC, extending this much contested phase to the lowest up to now record for Thasos and the northern Greece. The site is continuously inhabited from Early Bronze Age I until the early Late Bronze Age (LBA; 1363 BC) when it was abandoned. Comparison with other sites in Thasos and particularly with the inland site of Kastri Theologos showed that the first occupation at Aghios Antonios came soon after the abandonment of Kastri in the beginning of the 4th millennium. In fact, after the decline and abandonment of Aghios Antonios in the LBA, the site of Kastri was reinhabited, leading to the hypothesis that part of the coastal population moved inland. The presumed chronological sequence of alternate habitation between the two settlements may evoke explanations for sociocultural and/or environmental dynamics behind population movements in prehistoric Thasos. A major conclusion of the project is that the 4th millennium occupation gap attested in many sites of Greece, especially in the north, is probably bridged in south Thasos, when the data from all sites are taken together. The mobility of people in Final Neolithic south Thasos may explain the general phenomenon of limited occupational sequences in the FN of north Greece.

Consequences of South European Debt Crisis

2013 ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Yu. Kvashnin
Keyword(s):  
Focal Point ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Global Markets ◽  
European Region ◽  
International Specialization ◽  
European Debt Crisis ◽  
Of Greece

Debt crisis in South European region turned out to be the focal point of the European debt crisis. It made explicit fundamental disproportions in the development of the Eurozone, in particular strict division between the Center and the Periphery. After joining to the Eurozone South European countries faced further deterioration of their positions in the global markets and fixing of an unfavorable type of their international specialization. Such situation can be seen most evidently in the case of Greece.

‘Communal Hellenism’ and ancient tragedy performances in Greece (1975–95): The ritual quest

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
Efthymios Kaltsounas ◽  
Tonia Karaoglou ◽  
Natalie Minioti ◽  
Eleni Papazoglou
Keyword(s):  
Audience Reception ◽  
Collective Consciousness ◽  
National Theatre ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
The Press ◽  
Cultural Movements ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Folk Ritual ◽  
Ancient Drama ◽  
Of Greece

For the better part of the twentieth century, the quest for a ‘Greek’ continuity in the so-called revival of ancient drama in Greece was inextricably linked to what is termed and studied in this paper as a Ritual Quest. Rituality was understood in two forms: one was aesthetic and neoclassicist in its hermeneutic and performative codes, which were established and recycled – and as such: ritualized – in ancient tragedy productions of the National Theatre of Greece from the 1930s to the 1970s; the other, cultivated mainly during the 1980s, was cultural and centred around the idea that continuity can be traced and explored through the direct employment of Byzantine and folk ritual elements. Both aimed at eliciting the cohesive collective response of their spectators: their turning into a liminal ritual community. This was a community tied together under an ethnocentric identity, that of Greeks participating in a Greek (theatrical) phenomenon. At first through neoclassicism, then through folklore, this artistic phenomenon was seen as documenting a diachronic and essentially political modern Greek desideratum: continuity with the ancient past. Such developments were in tune with broader cultural movements in the period under study, which were reflected on the common imaginings of Antiquity in the modern Greek collective – consciousness – a sort of ‘Communal Hellenism’. The press reception of performances, apart from being a productive vehicle for the study of the productions as such, provides indispensable indexes to audience reception. Through the study of theatre reviews, we propose to explore the crucial shifts registered in the definition of Greekness and its dynamic connections to Antiquity.

scholarly journals Social development and public debt sustainability

2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 79
Author(s):  
Chara Vavoura ◽  
Ioannis Vavouras
Keyword(s):  
Fiscal Policy ◽  
Social Development ◽  
Public Debt ◽  
Debt Crisis ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Debt Sustainability ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Policy Measures ◽  
Of Greece

The issue of public debt sustainability is of exceptional importance in the case of Greece. As a rule, the relevant analysis is limited to the examination of the fiscal policy measures reported to contribute to reducing public debt leaving out the investigation of the factors that caused the country’s debt crisis. The objective of the present paper is to explore the determinants of Greece’s debt crisis and the strategy required to address it. Our work highlights the issue of social development, which is found to be a necessary condition for ensuring the long run sustainability of the country’s public debt.

Farmers and Hoplites: Models of Historical Development

Men of Bronze ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hans Van Wees
Keyword(s):  
Driving Force ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Lower Class ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Economic Changes ◽  
Leisure Class ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Yeoman Farmer ◽  
Of Greece

This chapter critiques the grand narrative of Hanson's The Other Greeks and argues that it is wrong in important respects. The chapter presents the social and economic changes in the eighth century that took place with the rise of the independent yeoman farmer and his culture of agrarianism as the driving force behind the political and military history of Greece. From the middle of the eighth century there was a class of elite leisured landowners that did not work the land themselves but supervised the toil of a large lower class of hired laborers and slaves. This era of gentlemen farmers who comprised the top 15–20 percent of society and competed with each other for status lasted for about two centuries. When the yeomen farmers emerged after the mid-sixth century, they joined the leisure class in the hoplite militia.

scholarly journals The Role of Archaeology in Forming Greek National Identity and its Embodiment in European Identity

2020 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 448-458
Author(s):  
Olga Katsiardi-Hering
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Archaeological Sites ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Modern Greek ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Roman Antiquity ◽  
Europe Today ◽  
Greek World ◽  
Of Greece

The murder of Johann Joachim Winckelmann, for many the ‘founder of archaeology’, in 1768 in a Trieste inn, did not mean the end for his work, which could be said to have been the key to understanding ancient Greece, which Europe was re-discovering at the time. In the late Enlightenment, Neoclassicism, followed by Romanticism, elevated classical, Hellenistic and Roman antiquity, and archaeological research, to the centre of academic quests, while the inclusion of archaeological sites in the era’s Grand Tours fed into a belief in the ‘Regeneration’/‘Wiedergeburt’ of Greece. The Modern Greek Enlightenment flourished during this same period, the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with a concomitant classicizing turn. Ancient Greek texts were republished by Greek scholars, especially in the European centres of the Greek diaspora. An admiration for antiquity was intertwined into the Neohellenic national identity, and the first rulers of the free Greek State undertook to take care of the nation’s archaeological monuments. In 1837, under ‘Bavarian rule’, the first Greek University and the ‘Archaeological Society of Greece in Athens’ were set up. Archaeologists flocked to Greece and those parts of the ancient Greek world that were still part of the Ottoman Empire. The showcasing of classical monuments, at the expense of the Byzantine past, would remain the rule until the latter half of the nineteenth century. Modern Greek national identity was primarily underpinned by admiration for antiquity, which was viewed as a source of modern Hellenism, and for ‘enlightened, savant, good-governed Europe’. Today, the ‘new archaeology’ is striving to call these foundations into question.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document