Urbanities,
Vol. 4
·
No 2
·
November 2014
© 2014
Urbanities
115
social context within which the loss of
employment is not merely an economic
event for redundant workers but also the
loss of one’s own social space. However,
the intertwining of economic and social
levels allows the activation of social
networks in the search for new
employment, which tends to be occasional,
informal and of low-status and with
minimal social protection.
On the other hand, employment
precariousness in the shipbuilding zone of
Perama – a result of ‘post-industrial
modernization,’ as the author calls it using
the official term – leads workers to
searching informal labour relations, which
to a great extent deal with the distribution
of information on employment through
social networks. Thus, actors make use, in
Goffman’s terms, of the ‘gimmicks’ they
know in trying to cope with the existing
framework of labour relations. Finally the
ethnography from the banking sector,
which also has informed other studies of
the author, is used here to demonstrate that
the concept of liminality also applies to
cases where workers have not lost their
jobs. Specifically, in the current conditions
of labour market flexibility and
deregulation, Spyridakis deals with the
attempt to discipline workers through
specific policies, whereby differences of
opinion with the bosses’ create the
conditions for harassment, intimidation
and possible job loss. Ethnographic
research reveals that, although they seem
to obey the existing organizational
principles, workers try, in fact, to adjust
them to their own needs. In this sense, they
manage their ‘liminal’ condition in a way
to allows them to avoid losing their job
and, at the same time, get on with the
organization.
From the analysis of these different
ethnographic cases, the author concludes
(Chapter 6) that, although actors
inadvertently form part of a framework of
alternating uncertain labour regimes and
forced destabilization, they do not
passively accept this condition but try to
adapt to the continuously changing
conditions through the activation of a
social political and cultural capital.
Spyridakis’ monograph is in many
ways an interesting ethnographic project.
Although based on past field research, the
analysis review of the material in the light
of the concept of liminality offers a new
perspective, especially in the context of the
current economic crisis. In this respect, this
is both an interesting experiment of
archival ethnography and an up-to-date
ethnographic approach to the economic
crisis in Greece, especially in the urban
space of Athens and the Piraeus, where the
crisis is experienced more acutely than in
the countryside. In this monograph
Spyridakis suggests an analysis of the
labour insecurity produced by the
economic crisis from an anthropological
perspective that looks at economic
phenomena as total social phenomena. In
such a perspective, people are not passive
recipients of centralized political and
economic decisions, but they adjust their
actions by capitalizing their social and
cultural experience, proving that they
operate beyond the level of ‘production
factor’ as conventional economic theory
demands. To a certain extent, this might
help to explain Greek society’s resistance
to the economic crisis.
Vassilis Dalkavoukis
Democritus University of Thrace,
Komotini – Greece
