Grassroots meanings and understandings of crisis in Chalkida, Greece

Abstract

In this paper I analyze how the economic crisis prevailed in the Greek everyday reality and expose its grassroots meanings and understandings. My aim it to reveal and analyze the multiple definitions crisis acquires on the social ground and how people explain the seven-year socio-economic depression brought by the persisting economic crisis in Greece. Drawing from selected ethnographic cases from Chalkida, Greece, a mid-sized city at the periphery of Athens, I explore the multiple meanings crisis and austerity acquires in the social ground and expose the relatedness between economic activities and social life. To this extent, I examine the various grassroots economic practices, logics and established socio-economics patterns of diversely situated people.