1.1 Urban Communities in Movement: A Global Insurgency in Times of Crisis
Austerity versus democracy: the contemporary urban landscape seems to be increasingly defined by this dialectic opposition, which is severely scarring the present of our cities and undermining their future. On the one hand, we see neoliberal urban policy agendas imposed through bailouts provided by supranational organisms; on the other, social movements born locally during the economic crisis that embody a critique of the dominant role given to financial institutions. This confrontational backdrop is now actively shaping urban space in terms of social conflict, thereby disclosing a new spatial order marked by its extreme polarisation that both creates and feeds on the absence of any political arena for dialogue.
Far from representing an isolated case, Greece stands out as one of the most acute instances of debt crisis seen internationally within the context of the economic recession. Since the moment when austerity truly exploded in the Eurozone, âthe Greek symptomâ has become a paradigmatic case of financial instability, so much so that it has been transformed into a scapegoat aimed at maintaining âa quite spectacular level of neoliberal punishmentâ (Badiou et. al. 2013). Officially announced in 2009, the implementation of the sovereign bailout programmes in Greece, however, also reflected an international global tendency sparked off by the collapse of the âtoo big to failâ theory in 2008. That is, when the burst of the subprime mortgage bubble and the bankruptcy of the American financial holding Lehman Brothers dragged the entire planet into an endless spiral of political volatility and economic restraint. Beginning with that monumental âbig bangâ, austerity officially made its entry on the global scene, soon to show its implosive effects both in deteriorating national economies and increasing social suffering.
At the same time, however, a wave of transnational anti-capitalist protests spread spontaneously across the worldâs major cities, taking the general form of civil disobedience. Demanding greater global justice and less economic inequality, it appeared in various square movements, each of them associated with a specific public location: Tahrir in Egypt, the Occupy movement in the USA, the Indignadosâs acampadas in Spain, Syntagma Square in Greece, Taksim Square and Gezi Park in Turkey. Rooted in the previous round of no-global contestations, these new urban insurgencies tied to the crisis were highly varied as regards their political and social composition. Managing the protest space as a camp, where a communitarian lifestyle was reproduced on a small scale, the conditions were created for giving a new meaning to public space and, in turn, for renewing the pact between citizens and politics. At the same time, however, identifying themselves as the 99% against the 1% of finance capital, they clearly revealed that their âcentral goals [were] not limited to territorially bounded urban issuesâ (Miller and Nicholls 2013). No less than their predecessors, on the whole, square movements have strengthened their methods of participation in the way suggested by Graeber (2004), that is, as âdecision-making processesâ developed horizontally through open assemblies aimed at negotiating consensus among all. Direct democracy has indeed been empowered in public spaces by communities in movement, who cultivated its seeds both within the spatial borders of each piazza and, symbiotically, by extending its very real existence on social networks and Web 2.0 platforms (Curcio & Roggero 2012; Fox Piven 2012; Lopes de Sousa & Lipietz 2011; MartĂnez RoldĂĄn 2011; Kanna 2012; n+1 & Dissident 2012; Occupy Wall Street 2012; Schrader & Wachsmuth 2012; Scrittori per il 99% 2012; Taddio 2012).
Although this criticism did not necessarily entail a true political shift made visible by national elections, it has contributed concretely by highlighting the political institutionsâ shortcomings in organizing the life of social society. This delegitimisation was only furthered by the intrusive interventions of the so-called Troika in domestic policy affairs, which, with its declaration of economic default, completely undermined the Stateâs ability to accomplish its primary tasks. As a whole, these global urban insurgences have brought to light the issue of sovereignty within the current economic crisis; vice versa, practices of social participation in occupied squares have begun once again to inspire political action. Overall, they have succeeded in giving a spatial form to an increasing scepticism as to neoliberal globalisation, thus developing a bottom-up antagonism that has effectively formulated a contestation of the mechanism of âaccumulation by dispossessionâ.
As has been well established by Marxist anthropologist and geographer David Harvey (Harvey 2012a, b), from the 1970s and the 1980s onwards, neoliberal capitalism has taken up financialisation, privatisation and commodification of urban space as its primary model in governing global cities, with the aim of reinforcing its economic and political dominion. This kind of modus operandi proceeded alongside a fragmentation of the public sphere, conducted by dismantling the welfare state and downgrading the domain of democracy in the name of the free market. Over the last few decades, âcapital accumulation through urbanisationâ has resulted in a polarisation of the distribution of wealth and power, thus intensifying spatial inequality and social injustice. Although crises have cyclically appeared over the history of humanity and that of capitalism, the debate on the urban issue currently seems to revolve around this kind of disparity, which is responsible as well for the contradictions lying at the root of neoliberal urban crises. More recently, the attention given to debt contexts has increasingly led a wide range of multidisciplinary academic interests towards a specific topical form of research, which is dealing with financial austerity essentially as a crisis of the neoliberal regime.
According to this critical perspective, the burst of the speculative bubble in 2008 can be depicted as the latest predatory attack against the city that, by concretely depriving individuals of the ownership of their homes, has also implied âa violent appropriation of labour and the wearing out of labouring and non-labouring bodiesâ (Butler and Athanasiou 2013). With this ultimate act of dispossessing people of their lives and personhood, âdebtocracyâ has done no more than finalise the neoliberal economic agenda implemented since the early 1980s, which âutilised the language of freedom and individuality to promote a basically dehumanizing and oppressive status quoâ (Afouxenidis 2015). Consequently, the thousands of insurgents who have gathered in public squares around the globe can be understood as an extreme response to the attempts being made by neoliberal powers to restructure their lives.
1.2 Europe, the Shock Must Go On. The Age of Austerity and Resistance in Greece
The bankruptcy of American firm Lehman Brothers set in motion a domino effect that, by late 2008, had already led to the eruption of the so-called sovereign debt crisis within the Eurozone. Coming from a pre-existing environment of high public expenditure, Southern countries above all faced rapidly growing borrowing costs and accelerating levels of debt. The most serious problems arose in Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain, countries which were collectively targeted with the infamous acronym PIIGS (CEO 2014).
Not long after the burst of the Spanish housing speculation bubble, Southern Europe truly came to the centre of the worldâs financial attention in October 2009, when Greeceâs new socialist government led by Giorgos Papandreou made a shocking announcement: the countryâs real budget deficit was four times higher than the European Union (EU)âs specified limit (reaching close to 12.7%), while its national debt was calculated at nearly twice the reference rate (over 112% of GDP). From that moment on, âthe prospect of a Southern sovereign debt default had entered the agenda [so much as that] in April 2010, Greece became the first Eurozone member to have its sovereign credit rating downgraded to junk status, effectively pricing it out of the marketsâ (Bosco and Verney 2012). The rest is no more and no less than a chronicle of our times. Well before the third tranche of assistance was agreed upon during the summer of 2015, on 12 February 2012, the Greek government ratified the second Memorandum of Understanding, thus securing an IMF/EU/ECB bailout amounting to âŹ130bn, largely aimed at supporting debt restructuring negotiations with Greeceâs private sector creditors and recapitalizing domestic banks. In much the same way as the former âŹ110bn agreement, signed in May 2010, this second package of financial support was provided on the condition that a new round of austerity and privatisation measures be pursued, including a 22% cut in the minimum wage and an extensive reduction of labour rights.
At the time, Greeceâs prime minister was Lucas Papademos, ex-chief of the countryâs National Bank and ex-vice president of the European Central Bank, appointed in 2011, at the same time as the economist Mario Monti, following the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi, was named head of the Italian government. Both of these nominations came directly from the EU and the Troika , and are therefore typical of the so-called âtime of the technocratsâ, that politically marked the European sovereign debt crisis as a suspension of normal constitutional rules and procedures. In both of these countries, the lack of elections was actually attributed to the emergency situation created by the economic crisis, âthat did not allow time for such democratic luxuriesâ (Verney and Bosco 2014). Nevertheless, parliamentary backing of this rescue programme was highly controversial, which further contributed to undermining Greeceâs national stability as regards both its government and its entire political system. The second Memorandum of Understanding was voted against by 74 MPs; 22 were from PASOK and 21 from ND, and all were immediately expelled from their respective parliamentary groups. Meantime, as the bailout agreement was being announced, the right-wing party LAOS withdrew from the government (Verney and Bosco 2014).
Although Greeceâs poverty rate was already the worst in the Eurozone prior to 2009, the implementation of austerity measures aggravated the recession in the country, dramatically affecting both state finances and real economy (and, furthermore, produced no results whatsoever in reducing the debt/GDP ratio). It also led to side effects consisting in a sudden increase of social inequality and spatial injustice. Under the rescue programme, the Greek government committed to proceed with job redundancies and wage and benefit cuts, making the unemployment rate skyrocket from 7.3% in 2008 to 27.9% in 2013, the highest in the EU. As a consequence, even more people were pushed into poverty, with an approximate 11% of the population living in extremely diff...