Abstract:
Anthropological literature on crises and social and solidarity economies
can benefit from integrated approaches that assess grassroots cooperatives formed
during critical periods of capitalist recession. This article debates on why it is
problematic to conceptualize the Greek crisis as exceptional and then examines the
relationship between the solidarity economy and cooperatives and argues that the
latter is a development of the former in the future plans of people struggling against
the crisis being witnessed in Greece. It moreover makes a case for there being a
need to pay more attention to the distribution sector. Its main aim is to point out how
participants engaged in initiatives related to the solidarity economy tend to imagine
that their activities are inspired by larger aims and claims than the immediate
significance of their material actions. This is done by ethnographically analyzing
organized social responses against crises through the rise of popular solidarity
economies associated with distribution of food without middlemen.
