Market Versus Society: Anthropological Insights

336 Pages·2018·3.84 MB·English

by  Manos Spyridakis

MANOS SPYRIDAKIS
EDITED BY
MARKET VERSUS
SOCIETY
ANTHROPOLOGICAL
INSIGHTS
Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology
Series Editors
Italo Pardo
School of Anthropology and Conservation
University of Kent
Canterbury, Kent, UK
Giuliana B. Prato
School of Anthropology and Conservation
University of Kent
Canterbury, Kent, UK
Half of humanity lives in towns and cities and that proportion is expected
to increase in the coming decades. Society, both Western and n on-Western,
is fast becoming urban and mega-urban as existing cities and a g rowing
number of smaller towns are set on a path of demographic and spatial
expansion. Given the disciplinary commitment to an empirically-based
analysis, anthropology has a unique contribution to make to our under-
standing of our evolving urban world. It is in such a belief that we have
established the Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology series. In the
awareness of the unique contribution that ethnography offers for a b etter
theoretical and practical grasp of our rapidly changing and increasingly
complex cities, the series will seek high-quality contributions from anthro-
pologists and other social scientists, such as geographers, political scientists,
sociologists and others, engaged in empirical research in diverse ethno-
graphic settings. Proposed topics should set the agenda concerning new
debates and chart new theoretical directions, encouraging reflection on
the significance of the anthropological paradigm in urban research and its
centrality to mainstream academic debates and to society more broadly.
The series aims to promote critical scholarship in international anthro-
pology. Volumes published in the series should address theoretical and
methodological issues, showing the relevance of ethnographic research in
understanding the socio-cultural, demographic, economic and geo-political
changes of contemporary society.
More information about this series at
http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14573
Manos Spyridakis
Editor
Market Versus Society
Anthropological Insights
Editor
Manos Spyridakis
Department of Social and Educational
Policy
University of the Peloponnese
Corinth, Greece
Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology
ISBN 978-3-319-74188-8 ISBN 978-3-319-74189-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74189-5
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017964581
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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A
cknowledgements
Looking back over the people who played a role in shaping this book
my first and great debt is to Dr. Italo Pardo and Dr. Giuliana Prato
whose permanent encouragement and assistance was and is always
inestimable. I also feel indebted to the peer reviewers whose insight-
ful remarks improved the content of the texts as well as to Dr. Michael
Christodoulou for commenting critically on several versions of them.
The idea of this book matured during the annual conference of the
Commission on Urban Anthropology on ‘Market versus Society. Human
principles and economic rationale in changing times’, that was held at the
University of the Peloponnese in 2011. Several chapters in this volume
are revised and expanded versions of papers that were presented at that
conference. I finally thank the authors for the originality of their texts
and their willingness to contribute to this spiritual effort. Of course it is
necessary to add the usual rider that the responsibility for the contents of
this book rests entirely with the editor.
Sitia-Crete, Greece
2017
v
c
ontents
1 Introduction 1
Manos Spyridakis
2 Economy and Society, Neoliberal Reform
and Economic Deviance 23
James G. Carrier
3 The Root of All Evil: Money, Markets,
and the Prospects of Rewriting the Rules of the Game 41
Alf Hornborg
4 Managing Against the Odds: Economic Crisis,
Bad Governance and Grassroots Entrepreneurialism
in Naples 61
Italo Pardo
5 From Nationalization to Neoliberalism: Territorial
Development and City Marketing in Brindisi 81
Giuliana B. Prato
6 Relations with the Market: On Cosmologies
of Capitalism in Greece 101
Andreas Streinzer
vii
viii CONTENTS
7 ‘We Are All Socialists’: Greek Crisis and Precarization 113
Manos Spyridakis
8 ‘De proletarios a propietarios…’ Neoliberal Hegemony,
Labour Commodification, and Family Relationships
in a ‘Petty’ Steel Workers’ Firm 133
Julia Soul
9 At the Periphery of Development: Scenarios
and Actors of an Industrial Settlement Experiment
and Its Crisis in the Case of FIAT-SATA in Melfi 153
Fulvia D’Aloisio
10 Workers’ Committees in Israel in the Heyday
of Neoliberalism: From Consent to Professionalisation
to Alternative Solutions 171
Gadi Nissim
11 Sport, the Market and Society: Contrasting
the Rhetoric and Reality of Sport as a Growth Catalyst 189
Iain Lindsay
12 Autonomy and Adaptivity: Farmer’s Work in France 209
Martin Büdel
13 Economic Rationality and Human Experience:
Global Agrifood Chains from the Perspective
of Social Anthropology 227
Alicia Reigada
14 Neoliberal Agrarian Policies and Its Effects:
Labour Flexibility and Regimentation in Mexico’s
Export Agricultural Industry 247
Christian Zlolniski
CONTENTS ix
15 The Renegotiation of Identity and Alterity
in an Economically and Spatially Changing
Context: The Case of a Former Industrial
and Mining District of Saint-Etienne (France) 267
Corine Vedrine
16 ‘Weak Heritage’ and Neighbourhood in Contemporary
Cities: Capitalism and Memories of Urban Utopias 285
Michel Rautenberg
17 Anthropology in a Neoliberal World 303
Paul Durrenberger
Index 319
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
Manos Spyridakis
After the disastrous economic crisis in 1929, John Maynard Keynes
delivered a lecture extolling optimism in the certainty that capitalism
will make us all happy by meeting all our seemingly insatiable needs.
Believing in the miraculous power of human will, Keynes put forward
the view that the intensification and development of productivity will be
the decisive factor in the satisfaction of human needs, leading to the next
significant step in human development—going from meeting material
toward spiritual necessities. As he describes the way the crisis was seen by
pessimists neglecting to see the seeds of future prosperity it theoretically
conveyed:
For the moment the very rapidity of these changes is hurting us and bring-
ing difficult problems to solve. Those countries are suffering relatively
which are not in the vanguard of progress. We are being afflicted with a
new disease of which some readers may not yet have heard the name, but
of which they will hear a great deal in the years to come, namely, tech-
nological unemployment. This means unemployment due to our discovery
of means of economising the use of labour outrunning the pace at which
we can find new uses for labour. But this is only a temporary phase of
M. Spyridakis (*)
Department of Social and Educational Policy,
University of the Peloponnese, Corinth, Greece
© The Author(s) 2018 1
M. Spyridakis (ed.), Market Versus Society, Palgrave Studies in Urban
Anthropology, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74189-5_1