(2015) Wit and Greece’s economic crisis: Ironic slogans, food, and antiausterity sentiments....

DANIEL M. KNIGHTDurham University

Wit and Greece’s economic crisis:Ironic slogans, food, and antiausterity sentiments

A B S T R A C TIronic slogans voice opposition to neoliberalausterity measures as people in western Thessaly,Greece, strive to account for dramatically increasingpoverty and cultivate a sense of collective sufferingin an era of economic crisis. The slogans are pinnedto moments of socioeconomic turmoil in recentGreek history, such as the 1941–43 famine and the1973 polytechnic uprising against militarydictatorship. Through satire, they capture local andnational attitudes toward the government’s currentausterity policy and neoliberalism more generally.Drawing on powerful tropes of food, the sloganscritique the experiences of neoliberal reform,becoming sites of resistance and solidarity thatreframe relations between local people, theirgovernment, and international creditors. [Greekeconomic crisis, slogans, irony and satire,neoliberalism, food, temporality]

“Together we ate it” [Mazi ta fagame], then deputy primeminister Theodoros Pangalos announced to reportersin 2010. He was speaking in reference to the €310 billionpublic debt facing Greece after 30 years of economicprosperity since accession to the European Economic

Community (EEC) in 1981. With this slogan, Pangalos was trying to sell anotion of collective responsibility for the debt. He asserted that, since the1980s, Greeks had “got fat” from government handouts, an almost unregu-lated banking sector that facilitated handsome personal loans, a stock mar-ket boom, and lucrative EU–endorsed business schemes. Farmers had satback and watched subsidies from the infamous Common Agricultural Pol-icy roll in, Greece was a prime destination for British and German tourists,and public-sector bonuses and pretty corporate kickbacks were the norm.It was common knowledge that people in positions of authority—fromlocal hospital directors to elected members of national parliament—“atemoney” (fagane lefta), and the culture of the little white envelope (fakelaki)stuffed with money was part of everyday life. With a slogan suggesting thateveryone had “got fat” together, Pangalos attempted to persuade his au-dience of collective responsibility for financial crisis and shape public atti-tudes toward an indefinite period of austerity and economic restructuring(cf. Holmes 2014:11). Pangalos, however, did not account for the abundantcounternarratives about the causes of economic crisis, such as the lendingpractices of international banks and the alleged serious mismanagementof the European single currency. The perceived lack of accountability forthe malpractice of creditors has caused considerable public anger.

Since Pangalos’s speech in 2010, numerous grassroots slogans di-rected back at the government and international creditors have voicedpublic concerns about the causes and consequences of enforced eco-nomic austerity, targeting blame for the crisis toward banks, capitalism,and powerful political figures. Through “linguistic modeling” (Holmes2014:6), slogans are designed to be easily repeated by diverse publicswanting to make sense of turbulent socioeconomic situations or rousepassionate support for social change. Through their inclusivity, sloganscondense the individual and the collective and regularly operate acrossboundaries of class, wealth, and political ideology. Expressing politicalagency, they are often comical, ironic, or emotive and carry within

AMERICAN ETHNOLOGIST, Vol. 42, No. 2, pp. 230–246, ISSN 0094-0496, onlineISSN 1548-1425. C© 2015 by the American Anthropological Association. All rights reserved.DOI: 10.1111/amet.12127

Wit and Greece’s economic crisis � American Ethnologist

them notions of collective responsibility and accountabilityand calls for political reform (Haugerud 2013:3).

Slogans that deploy ironic humor, as AngeliqueHaugerud (2013:2–3) illustrates, can be used to questionthe relationship between wealth and democracy and re-frame current political debates. Slogans “hold a mirror upto society” to raise awareness of uncomfortable questionsthat some sections of society may wish to ignore (Haugerud2013:18). The Greek slogans analyzed in the present articledraw on powerful cultural notions of food and eating tolink the current financial crisis with poignant historicalmoments of conflict, hunger, and political oppression.They emphasize a collective struggle and are a meansfor people to channel anger, disillusionment, and blametoward what Andrea Muehlebach (2012:6) terms the “moralauthoritarianism” of northern European neoliberalism.Not always directed at individuals but, rather, at widerpublics and government institutions, the slogans bothchallenge and reinforce neoliberal ideals and identities (cf.Muehlebach 2009). Antithetically to the argument posed byPeter Benson and Stuart Kirsch (2010:45) in one of the fewanthropological studies of slogans, the taglines assessedhere all increase the possibility for critical thinking amongdiverse publics. They are primarily a form of “communica-tive action performed socially and enacted prospectively”(Holmes 2014:10) at a time when people feel that they havebeen disenfranchised from the political process and havelittle control over the future of their own lives, let alone thatof their nation (Harvey 2005; Narotzky and Smith 2006:170).

As public images, slogans provoke complex emotionalresponses, acquiring their own histories of appropriationand commentary. They bear the aura of history, humanity,and possibility. Usually offering provocative perspectiveson routine aspects of everyday life, slogans are easily acces-sible to a mass-mediated sense of collectivity that facilitatespersonal affiliation with large-scale events such as nationaleconomic meltdown (Hariman and Lucaites 2007:1–2).They are therefore an important channel for understandinghow people experience the social history of a “highlycomplex, fractured, crisis-ridden world” (Narotzky andSmith 2006:1). The severe austerity measures imposed onGreece as the result of a wider project to erase and remakethe world in the mold of neoliberalism (Klein 2008:3; seealso Harvey 2005; Ortner 2011) have provided fertile groundfor the grassroots production and circulation of slogansreinforcing concepts of collective suffering, victimhood,and resilience.1

Neoliberalism, the prevailing approach to govern-ment, supplants regulation by law with market forcesand government functions by private enterprise, closelyinterweaving economics with politics (Greenhouse 2010:1;see also Clarke 2008; Harvey 2005; Ortner 2011; Wacquant2012). Neoliberal reform reconfigures relationships be-tween governing and governed, power and knowledge, and

sovereignty and territoriality (Ong 2006:3; also Wacquant2012:69–70), assuming that “market-based popular cultureof differentiated consumerism and individual libertar-ianism” (Harvey 2005:42; see also Haugerud 2010:127)eventually yields the best outcome for all.

In the context of extensive austerity measures aimedat making Greece “more neoliberal” while championingan “improvement” on traditional social relationships, asignificant number of my research participants are findingthat neoliberal reform brings permanent impoverishment,a democracy deficit, social fragmentation, and loss of polit-ical accountability (cf. Greenhouse 2010:1). In this article,I discuss how ironic and satirical slogans provide a way forpeople to express their political agency in the face of ne-oliberal austerity measures that have irrevocably reshapedsocial relations. Slogans constitute emergent “signs” or“messages” from a public highly animated by the ongoingpain of neoliberal reform. Troika—the combined namegiven to the IMF, European Commission, and EuropeanCentral Bank, which oversee the Greek austerity program—has administered €240 billion of bailout money to Greecesince 2010 and is the target of numerous ironic slogans.2

Many of my research participants, spanning social and po-litical strata,3 feel that Troika austerity measures imposed inthe name of neoliberalism are an attack on national historyand culture, belonging, and self-identity. The antiausterityslogans are reactions to policy dictated by Troika andsanctioned by the Greek state. While much internationalmedia coverage focuses on incomprehensible numbers,flowcharts, market “logic,” and the need to tackle the so-called endemic corruption of southern Europe, the sloganspresented here are representative of the everyday “living” of“actually existing” neoliberal reform at the grassroots level(cf. Peck and Theodore 2012). The slogans are a form of re-sistance, protest, and a search for political accountability.4

On the basis of long-term research conducted in thetowns of Trikala, Karditsa, and Kalampaka in western Thes-saly, central Greece, I analyze a selection of slogans thathave captured public imagination by referring to poignantmoments of the past that rouse feelings of collective suffer-ing and the fear of returning to times of conflict and poverty.The slogans all refer to food (or lack thereof), edible items,or the act of eating. Food is “embedded” in all domains ofGreek culture, David Sutton (2013) has recently argued, andthrough it, people construct acts of suffering, resilience, andprotest against neoliberal reform.5 Here I explore how slo-gans, as expressions of political agency, capture local andnational attitudes toward austerity policy and neoliberalismmore generally.

Unpacked one by one in this article, some of theslogans, like “Bread, Education, Freedom” (Psomi, Paideia,Eleftheria), have been reborn or recycled, whereas others,including “Antoni leave the Wi-Fi and give food to thepeople” (Antoni ase to Wi-Fi kai dose ston lao na faei), have

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been coined recently. However, all of the slogans empha-size a collective struggle as people attempt to comprehendrapidly changing living standards. Through irony and satire,the slogans locate blame for decreasing living standardson ruthless political figures in Greece and abroad andscramble temporal trajectories, reflecting the increasingfear of returning to times of famine, violent conflict, andauthoritarianism.

Irony: A pause for thought, a moment ofstillness

“Together we ate it” (or “we ate it together”), delivered byPangalos as political rhetoric intended to incite solidarityand a sense of collective responsibility for crisis, has beenturned into a slogan in an act of mocking imitation. Theslogan has gained notoriety and is now ironically quotedby housewives, television hosts, and members of the mainopposition party, SYRIZA (Vournelis 2013). Troika auster-ity policy has contributed to unemployment rising above28 percent (62 percent among people under the age of 25;see BBC News Business 2014), wages and pensions beingcut, bonuses abolished, protected business sectors openedup to international competition, the implementation of awide-scale privatization initiative, and drastic reforms tothe public sector. People in western Thessaly, where I haveconducted ethnographic research on historical conscious-ness, socioeconomic relations, and entrepreneurship since2003, can no longer afford to heat their homes, pay for vi-tal medication, or, in extreme cases, provide sufficient foodfor their families. For them, Pangalos has become a figure offun who, with his slogan, seriously misjudged the indigna-tion of his audience (Theodossopoulos 2013). Redeployinghis words, people recollect how out of touch politicians arewith the suffering of everyday citizens. Popi, a 44-year-oldsupermarket employee, explains,

“Together we ate it?” Well, okay, we can argue aboutthis idea another day. By the size of his belly and thatof [former deputy prime minister] Evangelos Venizelosthe politicians obviously ate a lot more than the peo-ple (laos) . . . He should start taking some responsibil-ity and actually think about how his citizens will reallyfeed themselves now that they cannot afford food. Heshould step down from his privileged position and getin touch with reality because we all know that his familyis still eating well. [conversation in March 2013, Trikala]

Not only do Thessaliots perceive figures like Pangalos tobe the cause of social destitution through decades of ne-oliberal greed (termed neo-fileleftherismos [neoliberalism]or kapitalismos [capitalism]), but they also characterize himas a collaborator with the higher foreign powers enforcingeconomic reform while he himself remains in a position ofsocial privilege. Since the outbreak of crisis, Pangalos, like

most Greek politicians, is seen as a puppet of foreign pow-ers, compared by some of my research participants to theNazi collaborators that ran Greece in World War II. In a rep-resentative statement, in December 2013, Lakis, an elderlyman from Karditsa, told me that “they [politicians] all justdo what they are told to save their own skins. They will nevergo hungry.” For Lakis, Pangalos represents the cause of theinitial problem and—much like UK chancellor George Os-borne, who insists that “we are all in it together”6—he stillhas the audacity to claim collective suffering (cf. Knight2013:155).

Since the global economic downturn commenced in2008, the collective inchoate “we” has been incorporatedinto political slogans and speeches in an attempt to locateaccountability and call for national solidarity, but it is nota new phenomenon (cf. Carrithers 2007, 2008). When gov-ernments face social or economic meltdown, the collective“we” is employed through slogans to justify questionablepast policy decisions, rouse solidarity for controversialrescue packages, and “recruit” publics to the neoliberalcause (Holmes 2014:1). At the World Jobs Summit in Detroitin 1994, the U.S. president announced that companies“must cooperate in facing their common problem—unemployment—in much the way they have cooperatedfor fifty years to defeat Communism, to stand up againstIraqi aggression, and to expand the global trading system”(Campbell 2003:3). In another case, the Mexican presidentplaced the “responsibility to reform” on the participation“of all political parties and of all society” (Campbell 2003:4).The slogan for Barack Obama’s 2008 election campaign,“Yes we can,” was interpreted by some as a powerfulcall for social change directed toward collective action.Like Osborne’s “We are all in it together,” the aim in theabove cases is to invoke a sense of social responsibility inthe face of prejudice, crisis, and dispossession (as Bensonand Kirsch [2010:45] discuss in a different context). ForPangalos, this dramatically backfired.

“Together we ate it”7 remains perhaps the mostprominent slogan associated with the Greek economiccrisis and is likely to be ironically quoted long after thecurrent waves of financial turmoil have passed. It topsa list of catchy slogans, quips, and puns formed duringthe crisis, many of which critique increasing poverty andsocial suffering. Spearheaded by the television programRadio Arvila,8 broadcast on the private channel Antenna,satirical commentary is directed toward the governmentand Troika—especially Germany—and comes in the formof jokes, songs, voice-overs, and snappy captions. Someslogans, sketches, and parodies are comical while others aredeadly serious and heart wrenching (cf. Haugerud 2013:5).The slogans gaining greatest popularity reference symbolicitems of food, the act of eating, and specific events in Greekhistory. Bread, cucumbers, famine, money eating, Germanoccupation, Ottoman landlords, dictatorship, civil war, and

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Figure 1. “Vote for Ali Baba, he only has 40 thieves,” graffiti on the main bridge over the River Lithaios, Trikala, Greece, August 2014. Photo by DanielKnight.

famous figures in national history provide the plot elementsfor a plethora of slogans that are publicly circulated andoccasionally find their way into the halls of parliament.

One slogan that did not directly pertain to food butthat addressed the same concerns, was spray-painted onthe side of a bridge in central Trikala in 2014. Reading“Vote for Ali Baba, he only has 40 thieves,” the slogan iron-ically referred to recent corruption scandals implicatingparliamentarians, hospital directors, and pharmaceuticalcompanies. The slogan mocked not only the “money eat-ing” elements of the national government, deemed to havestolen millions of euros from voters, but also the unelectedTroika “thieves” who, in the eyes of Trikalinoi, are system-atically stealing from every Greek citizen (see Figure 1).

Irony and satire are employed to raise concerns overdrastically changing social circumstances, rising poverty,and exploitation. Yet the slogans are not ephemeral or flip-pant. Often, humor is not the ultimate goal of ironic slo-gans, jokes, and statements, although comedy (as opposedto satire) does herald “the restoration of harmony and rec-onciliation of conflict” (Haugerud 2013:10). Instead, ironyhelps unpack a whole set of complex circumstances withdeep social and historical roots (Pipyrou 2014a:535). Thisirony is not fleeting, not intended to allow the audience amomentary laugh before continuing with their daily rou-tine. Ironic slogans are intended to make the audiencepause to critically reflect on issues at the center of social

and political debate, to evaluate, on the basis of a collec-tively recognized set of social and historical criteria, howand why their lives have changed. Slogans like those adorn-ing the bridge in Trikala leave the observer in a momentof stillness, wondering whether to laugh or cry: Is the sen-timent primarily comical or should it be taken seriously?Irony thus offers more than a transitory moment of hope orresistance (see Herzfeld 2001); Haugerud (2013:35–36) sug-gests that irony allows people to confront the absurd, theperversely ridiculous, and the politically controversial. AsStavroula Pipyrou (2014a) has recently argued in this jour-nal, irony is a redirection of seriousness that helps openup a central theme to numerous avenues of debate (alsoBurke 1945; Carrithers 2012; Fernandez and Huber 2001).Photographs of the “Ali Baba” slogan (often shared throughsocial media) never failed to ignite passionate debate con-cerning a range of issues surrounding the current economicand political situation, even among otherwise disinterestedpublics. Irony thus provokes open discussions about fun-damental categories of inclusion and exclusion at the veryheart of social life (Fernandez and Huber 2001:9).

Discussing creative verbal attempts to rationalize un-familiar motives in the context of the NATO interventionin Yugoslavia at the end of the 1990s, Keith Brown andDimitrios Theodossopoulos argue that irony allows peoplethe rhetorical power to “accommodate the unfamiliar byre-combining fragments of the familiar” (2000:4; see also

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2003, 2004), blurring but not erasing the boundary betweenjest and political commentary. In the case of the NATObombing campaign, irony, sarcasm, and parody were em-ployed by people in Greece and Macedonia “not merely[as] a safety valve for unreleased tension” but as a delib-erately applied form of political commentary that demon-strated an awareness of contingency and history (Brownand Theodossopoulos 2000:4–5, 2003). Specific targets forironic comments included figures of political power suchas Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and Madeleine Albright. Ironicquips also targeted ethnic stereotypes and drew compar-isons with other periods of foreign intervention in theBalkans, such as the 1974 Cyprus conflict (Brown and Theo-dossopoulos 2003:321, 326).

Satire, Nicolas Argenti (2007:15–16) highlights in thecontext of West African dance, can be used to underscorethe relationship between government politics and ostra-cized publics. Satire is appropriated by the dominatedto bear witness to the oppression of colonial overlords,oligarchs, and patrons and bring them together in onetime-space. For Argenti, irony helps unmask social inequal-ity in moments that entrap, twist, and reconstitute powerrelations. Irony plays on the ambiguity between seriousnessand humor to capture often-oppressive political agendasand provoke passionate responses among an audience(Argenti 2007:21). Irony, satire, and mockery are acceptableforms of confronting authority that go against monolithic,static memorializing of political and historical events.9

Food, temporality, and protest

In drawing on specific historical events that have nationalimport, slogans become powerful affective tools that bridgethe gap between political policy and the lived tenor of thesedecisions (Benson and Kirsch 2010:46).10 Any Greek with ahigh school education will be able to relate to the signifi-cance of slogans referring to the Great Famine of 1941–43.Speaking to me at a parents’ evening at a local school inDecember 2013, a middle-aged teacher from the town ofTrikala said that, “when I read the graffiti lamenting hungeror see bread being taken into parliament as a symbol of thecurrent crisis, I am taken back to stories of my grandfather’schildhood during the famine when he searched the streetsfor scraps of bread.”11 Most Greeks over the age of 18 willbe familiar with the slogan “Bread, Education, Freedom”chanted from the rooftops during antidictatorship demon-strations at the Athens Polytechnic University in 1973. Theslogan was prominent in antiausterity protests in 2013, asdemonstrators marked the 40-year anniversary of the poly-technic uprising by directly comparing the 1967–74 militarydictatorship with the current Troika “occupation.”

Moments of the past, like the Great Famine and thepolytechnic demonstration, are collective events etchedinto the national psyche through films, theater, and

educational textbooks (Knight 2012a:352). Haugerud(2013:28) has suggested that satirical critiques of inequalityand power relations are only potent if they are basedon shared understandings of history and politics. Thus,slogans are pinned to affective historical events in a formof polytemporality (Knight 2012b; Sutton 2011), bringingcollectively recognized moments of the past back to lifein the present. This sewing together of past events withpresent circumstances serves numerous purposes, includ-ing endorsing collective suffering, identifying a commontarget of blame, and reminding people that current circum-stances can be overcome. As will become clear throughthe ethnographic vignettes offered in this article, food isregularly the chosen medium for people in Greece to makehistorical reference to hardship and social desperation.

Cucumbers, potatoes, yogurt, and hunger are allsymbols of the current economic crisis that punctuatedaily discourse in public and private spheres. Food inGreece is a marker of collective social well-being, signifyingeither wealth and prosperity or famine and destitution.Often embedded within evocative narratives of politics andeconomy, in the Greek imaginary food is loaded with socialand sensory memory and laced with symbolic historicalmoments of personal, local, and national import (Sutton2001; cf. Toren 2009). In times of economic austerity,changes in patterns of food consumption are immediatelyrelated to past epochs of hardship and incorporated intocritiques of the crisis situation. Throughout Greece, foodevokes family, history, place, and local knowledge and iscentral to a nationalized ideology of cultural belonging,albeit incorporating local nuances. As I have noted else-where (Knight 2014b:185), certain items of food hold acentral place in local and national imagery: Olives may bethe idiom that facilitates collectivity in Zakynthos (Theo-dossopoulos 1999:618); on Kalymnos, it is stuffed grapeleaves (Sutton 2001:90, 2011:468); in Trikala, it is barley withmutton; and in Greek Macedonia, mushrooms represent apoignant history of foreign oppression and local resilience.Meanwhile, for Greek students in British universities, feta isoften the cheese of choice, summoning feelings of nationalpride (cf. Herzfeld 1991; Sutton 2001:78).

Food thus provides a cognitive and embodied link tohomeland and history, maintaining an extraordinary placein the weaving of collective memory and bearing socialand cosmological messages of social well-being (Appadu-rai 1981:494). Complex “gastro-politics” indicate socialrelations characterized by equality, intimacy, solidarity,and community, Arjun Appadurai (1981:494–496) suggests,while also seeming, paradoxically, to sustain relations ofsocial hierarchy, distance, or segmentation. In Greece,through people’s relations with food, one can estimate theconsequences of political policy, conditions of the market,and realities of plenty and want. For Greeks, food anddrink are inextricably linked to local and national identity

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formation and are essential to the construction of person-hood in a rapidly changing social world (Bampilis 2013; cf.Barndt 2002). As food is a marker of social, cultural, andhistorical belonging, collective identification with items offood provides the basis to critique the politics and powergames taking place in crisis-stricken Greece. When used inslogans, food is a medium to express conflict over specificcultural and economic resources that reconfigure ideas ofsharing, power, and belonging. How people talk about andphysically interact with food is important for gauging themood of a nation.

Through physical and particularly powerful semioticprotest, food is used to oppose the hegemonic rule of thepolitical elites that enforce austerity. Sutton has noted howfood has become the center of creative protest against ne-oliberal governance during social unrest in Greece, Egypt,and the United States. He argues that food contextualizesand moralizes troublesome social situations, challengingthe “supposedly neutral non-cultural language of neolib-eral economics” (2013:346).12 The undermining of neolib-eral markets has become particularly prominent in Greecethrough a series of social movements advocating alternateforms of trade. Current initiatives operating outside con-ventional forms of market exchange include the “potatomovement” that distributes potatoes free or “at cost” fromcooperatives, the rise of food markets accepting alterna-tive currencies such as that of the Topiki Enallaktiki Mon-ada (TEM) system in the town of Volos (Kanters 2013), andthe increase in the cultivation of small private vegetableplots facilitating resource sharing among villagers. Soupkitchens run by NGOs are now a common sight in Athens,Thessaloniki, and some Aegean Islands, and the neo-NaziGolden Dawn party has organized the free distribution offood parcels on condition of proof of Greek nationality.

People use food to challenge neoliberalism in othercontexts. In a now infamous event, Communist Party (KKE)member Liana Kanelli attempted to enter a loaf of breadand a liter of milk into the parliamentary record to remindher colleagues debating new austerity measures of the suf-fering their policies create (Sutton 2013:346). Television ad-vertisements use restaurant scenes to debase governmentauthority as actors parody a potential government refusal topay outstanding bills (on political parody, see Boyer 2013).Items of food such as yogurt, tomatoes, eggs, and flour arethrown at politicians, foreign bureaucrats, and corrupt for-mer ministers (Vournelis 2011, 2013:356–357).

Food is also present in the ultimate form of protest incrisis-stricken Greece, with suicide notes regularly citingsevere hunger and the inability to provide food for thefamily as the primary reasons for ending one’s own life(Knight 2012b:59–62). The provision of food is entangledwith powerful cultural notions of honor, and these notesindicate that the only solution to unbearable public shameis to kill oneself (Pipyrou 2014b:191–192). It is apparent

that food is central to protest and notions of solidarity andbelonging. Slogans harness the cultural importance of foodto challenge existing power relations and demand politicaland socioeconomic change.

Capitalist cucumbers

“For five days you eat the cucumber, but on Saturday youare someone” [Pente meres tros aggouri, ma to savvato eisaimouri] reads the graffiti adorning the side of a multina-tional beauty outlet in the town of Trikala. Graffiti, BruceCampbell (2003:3) suggests, plays a key role in the “politicsof visibility” during times of socioeconomic upheaval; agraffiti artist from Trikala refers to his spray-painted slogansas “the philosophy of the walls.” The tone of graffiti sloganshas changed in the past five years. The artist tells mesomething that is clearly evident during a leisurely morningstroll through any Greek urban center: Graffiti no longerreflects support for mainstream political parties—the greensun of PASOK and the bright red hammer and sickle of thecommunist KKE are conspicuously absent. Even hard-coreparty political supporters now rarely “tag their territory.”Nowadays, graffiti is generally very emotional, “physicallyseeping with desperation and anguish” to use MichelSerres’s (1995:4) evocative language (see Figure 2).

Cucumbers regularly crop up, so to speak, in everydayconversation in Greece, symbolizing deeply historical hard-ship, and can also be found throughout popular culture.In his majestic four-volume novel Ta paidia tis Niovis (Thechildren of Niobe, 1995), Tasos Athanasiadis narrates—often through irony and caricature—the relocation ofGreek populations during the Asia Minor catastrophe of the1920s: “In front of Lito’s pharmacy a bear-tamer was pullinga bear munching on a huge cardboard cucumber withthe inscription ‘THE BUDGET’” (1995:226–227). With thisimage, Athanasiadis is saying that, once again, the people(laos) will have to endure (or “eat”) the hardship broughtabout by the new budget. The cucumber represents theabject poverty of the common citizen.

Additionally, sayings such as “Life is like a cucumber;either you eat it and it refreshes you or you eat it and cryin pain” [I zoi einai san aggouri; eite tros kai drosizesai, eitetros kai zorizesai],13 “This work is a big cucumber (lit. pain)”[Afti i douleia einai megalo aggouri], and “He/She foundit to be a cucumber (lit. very difficult)” [To vrike aggouri]are enduring adages highlighting the cucumber as a sym-bol of the pain and suffering incurred during a lifetime. Itwas perhaps inevitable that the cucumber would becomea key symbol of the hardship brought about by the eco-nomic crisis. The cucumber slogan was a graffiti tag beforethe crisis, but since 2009 it has appeared on the walls ofshops, railway stations, and apartment blocks from Athensto Lamia, Trikala to Thessaloniki. It even has its own Face-book page. The cucumber—in this instance, representing

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Figure 2. “For five days you eat the cucumber, but on Saturday you are someone,” graffiti in central Trikala, Greece, June 2012. Photo by Daniel Knight.

hardship—features prominently in conversations about theeconomic crisis. Kostas, a 44-year-old mechanic with a pri-vate garage in Trikala, says that the slogan painted on thebeauty outlet has become a popular way to voice protestagainst austerity measures while emphasizing the collectivestruggle of “people against the politicians and economists.”The cucumber is a phallic symbol that represents economicausterity being forcefully administered by Troika and theGreek government. The slogan implies that the cucumber(austerity) is being forced inside the anus of local inhab-itants. They are being sodomized by what Kostas terms“capitalist austerity . . . by Merkel, Obama, Samaras.” Insummer 2013, Kostas says the cucumber is representative“of the pain we are all enduring as austerity is forced uponus . . . hitting not only our pockets [implying money], notonly our minds, but also our bodies . . . nothing is sacredand they [politicians and Troika] have no morals.”

Since austerity hit, businesses in Trikala have struggledwith the decrease in expendable income, increasing taxes,and a dramatic rise in unemployment, leading to the clo-sure of dozens of shops in the town center. People are fedup with declining living standards that have led to manyTrikalinoi resorting to burning old furniture, clothes, andunsuitable, illegally sourced firewood to heat their homes(Knight 2014a). Stella, a 35-year-old shop owner tells methat “every day employers and employees gather outsidetheir shops in the road to talk and exchange depressingstories of their financial woes,” as there are no customers

frequenting their businesses. Another local shop owner,Anita, 55, notes that the cucumber is a reminder that peo-ple or governments that one may never see face-to-facecan creep up behind you without warning. She passion-ately narrates, “We [Greeks] were enjoying our lives, ourmoney, not thinking that anything bad could happen. Wehad bought into the idea that we all had money to spend.We had 30 years of money, money, money. Our governmentand ‘Europe’ were our friends. But we got complacent andthey crept up on us brandishing a gigantic cucumber” (con-versation in December 2013, Trikala). Anita, who is marriedto a secondary school teacher, goes on to say that peopleshould have been more prepared, as history should havetaught them that the next “cucumber” is always just aroundthe corner. “The crisis is history repeating itself. We have afew years when everything goes well, life is good, and thenthe next crisis. The next cucumber if you like.” She notesthat the region of Thessaly gained independence from theOttoman Empire in 1881 only to be troubled by the Balkanwars and then reoccupied by Axis forces in 1940. Then fol-lowed famine (1941–43), a gruesome civil war (1946–49),and dictatorship (1967–74), interspersed with periods ofeconomic prosperity. “The cucumber is the crisis, it is thedepression and anxiety we have suffered in the past at dif-ferent moments and we are experiencing now. You have to‘eat’ it, what else can you do?”

As they were in wartime Athens (see Psathas 1944), veg-etables are now at the fore of movements that invert what

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had become conventional market-based power relations.Launched in 2012 as a symbolic gesture against heavy tax-ation of small-scale farmers, the “potato movement” hasbecome a national phenomenon. Large-scale agribusinessand the use of numerous middlemen had forced farmersto sell their produce below cost price. However, by the timethe produce reached supermarket shelves in urban areas, ithad become unaffordable for the average consumer (Vour-nelis 2013:358). After free handouts in Thessaloniki, an NGOfrom the town of Katerini bought potatoes in bulk from a co-operative to sell at cost to local consumers. The selling pricethus doubled for the farmers and the purchase price halvedfor the consumers. The movement immediately caught on,went national, and inspired similar schemes for the sale ofother fruit and vegetables (Vournelis 2013).

In 2011, mass media brought attention to the factthat cucumbers were greatly in demand in other Balkanstates, leading to the “€1 per kilogram” cucumber produc-tion initiative. Although it is not as popular as the potatomovement, small-scale farmers have begun to exportcucumbers to retailers in Bulgaria and Romania for a fixedprice of €1 per kilogram, providing a valuable source of extraincome at a time of fiscal strain. Cucumbers have also beenat the center of local programs advocating the exchange offruit and vegetables among villagers in rural Greece. Fani, a67-year-old retired pharmacist from Trikala, grows cucum-bers, pumpkins, and cabbages in her small back garden.Like many people since the outbreak of crisis, Fani replacedher flowerbeds with a vegetable patch. She says that “it isimportant to provide yourself with as much food as possiblewithout relying on supermarkets. I have to feed myself aswell as my son and his family and you can survive on fruitand vegetables for a long time” (conversation in August2013, Trikala). Fani exchanges some vegetables for otheritems of food provided by other villagers, remarking thatthis practice has not taken place in her neighborhood sincethe 1980s. “Katerina brings me eggs and I give her someolives. Dimitris grows oranges and tomatoes but needs mycucumbers and pumpkins. I also send some vegetables tofamily members that live in the town center and do not havea garden . . . this practice had been lost over the past 20 to 30years.” Similar to what Christina Toren (2009:132) has notedin Fiji, the sharing of food has given new form to kinshipand neighborly relations as people reconceptualize notionsof “common good” (Muehlebach 2012:18). The importanceof being self-sufficient in staple foods is emphasized duringregular petrol and haulage strikes, when supermarketshelves in peripheral areas remain bare for up to two weeks.

Andreas, 60, explains that the fear of returning to timesof hunger akin to the Great Famine has persuaded peopleto grow their own vegetables: “we have now got a small veg-etable patch and have planted some fruit trees . . . noth-ing is guaranteed anymore . . . we all know the stories ofthe Great Famine when people couldn’t even buy vegetables

and can’t risk returning to those times. Here in Thessaly wehave gardens and fields to grow the essential food to avoidstarvation” (conversation in August 2013, Trikala).

On a recent visit to Athens, a shopkeeper bemoaned thefact that in 2002 he had sold his house in his rural ancestralvillage to fund his son’s university expenses and a new carand holiday for the family. He asked, “What will I do now ifI can’t afford food? At least that house (in the village) had agarden to grow fruit and vegetables. Here in Athens I have arented flat and my business is failing . . . but ten years ago Iwas not expecting the crisis.”

It is not difficult to understand why items of food—inthis case, the cucumber—become poignant mediums forexpressing disillusion with the current socioeconomicsituation. Changes in food production and consumptionrepresent the literal embodiment of shifting economiccircumstances. Cucumbers envelop multiple meaningsas symbolic of hardship; they relate to past eras of socialturmoil and current social movements against the marketeconomy and are representative of the everyday anxietysurrounding staple food provision. Cucumbers are alsocentral to local satirical humor and ironic jest. Apostolis,28, says that people are now resigned to the fact that theirfuture may be out of their own hands: “Troika are fuckingyou with the cucumber, but what can you do? You justhave to get on with life, otherwise you will die worrying”(conversation in August 2013, Trikala). Giannis, 60 and abuilder, also suggests that the cucumber is symbolic of howforeigners are opportunistically profiting from the sorrysocioeconomic situation in Greece:

Germany and our own government are raping Greece,raping our banks by giving us unpayable loans, rapingour land and natural resources by selling islands andputting solar panels where we once grew crops, rapingour children’s future . . . we are being violated and theidea of the fat cucumber is something everyone can re-late to, whatever way they are being violated. [conver-sation in December 2013, Trikala]

Giannis notes that the cucumber is also a reminder that “wewill get up and carry on. We can take it.” Referring to a cu-cumber’s phallic resemblance, he says that even some of theAncient Greek heroes had to sometimes “take it up the ass”when they were away at war, and he jokingly adds, “AncientGreeks had huge cucumbers. Imagine that. We only have todeal with Germans!” Resilience in the face of violation is animportant aspect to the second part of the slogan.

Saturday you are someone

Situated in the ideals of northern European neoliberalism(see Muehlebach 2012:6), my Scandinavian friend is per-plexed by Greek attitudes toward austerity: “They all sitaround drinking their coffees and lying on the beach . . .

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they are not even trying to change their lifestyles but con-tinue to complain.” His voice is echoed by many diasporicGreeks living in the United Kingdom and the United Stateswho, upon returning to Trikala for the Christmas festivities,remark that “people endlessly complain and whinge butthey still have great lives. They don’t want to work and havehad it too easy for too long.” They claim that “evidence” ofthis headstrong attitude can be found by simply “watch-ing people in cafeterias, bars or at the beach.” Surely, theonlookers declare, Greeks who continue to spend so muchmoney on coffee, nice clothes, and holidays cannot trulypretend to be victims of austerity. The reasons for the re-fusal of some Greeks to sacrifice some basic pleasures of lifeas they adapt to the new economic landscape (cf. Procoli2004:8) are summed up in the second part of the cucumberslogan: “On Saturday you are someone.”

The day is irrelevant. It could be replaced by any otherday of the week. The message is simple. Apostolis believesthat the slogan is a glorious celebration of Greek resilienceagainst “people who want to destroy us in the name ofcapitalism”:14 “No matter how much we are punished,demoralized and beaten into the dirt, we will rise aboveadversity and enjoy life. The slogan is a triumphant callfor solidarity and stubbornness in the face of externalattempts—by Troika, puppet politicians, the capitalists—toobliterate the very fabric of life. Remember, ‘You are some-one’” (conversation in August 2013, Trikala).15 Moreover,Apostolis says, in championing a sense of collective victim-hood, the slogan attempts to remind the individual that, al-though faced with unemployment, poverty, and 24–7 mediacoverage of imminent doom, there is a life beyond austerity.

The slogan also promotes the idea of “maintainingface” amidst economic turmoil. A persistent demand topreserve social status through consumption practiceshas a long social history throughout the Mediterranean(see Argyrou 1996:74, 97; Hirschon 1989:226; Knight2015b; Lison-Tolosana 1966:96; Pipyrou 2014a).16 Al-though perhaps not consistent with the expectations ofnorthern European economists, Troika representatives,or my Scandinavian friends, the social value placed onpublic appearance and commensality does not disappearovernight and does not necessarily imply either prosperityor laziness. Well-documented notions of honor and statusform the basis for continued conspicuous consumptionenabling people to maintain personal and familial prestige.Despite a radical decrease in expendable income, in centralGreece people continue to participate in status compe-tition through conspicuous consumption and to pursueculturally significant activities such as the so-called cafeculture (Cowan 1991; Knight 2015b; Papataxiarchis 1991).Haris, a private business owner, 44, explains,

The crisis is all around us. There is coverage 24 hours aday on television. I have no customers in my shop. My

son cannot get a job despite a university education. Ihave 1,000 new taxes to pay. Every day is a war. But Icannot just stop living. This crisis isn’t going away any-time soon. What do the Germans expect us to do—allstay at home and abandon our culture? That is impos-sible. Every week there is a new government austeritypolicy, a different foreign economic bureaucrat visitingAthens to tell us how to live our life. But I cannot die ofstress; I have to continue as normally as possible. Anddrinking a coffee with friends allows me to share mypain if I so choose, but also to escape from the stress oflife. I cannot lose all self-worth or I will end up commit-ting suicide . . . the slogan tells Troika and politiciansthat they will not break us. It also shows them that we,the Greeks, are together in our defiance of their laws.[conversation in December 2013, Kalampaka]

The decision to continue dining out, clubbing, andgoing on holiday may seem “illogical” economic behaviorto the bodies charged with reforming not only nationalbudgets and macroeconomic flowcharts but also the wayGreeks are perceived to think about personal finance.However, most of my informants believe that such activitiesconstitute a form of solidarity and collective resistance toimpositions by European neoliberal economists that, theybelieve, are aimed at “destroying Greek identity.” Solidarity,Muehlebach (2012:227) argues, constitutes a communityof interest with the oppressed and exploited (also Arendt1963:79). In the present case, the people gathering in barsand cafeterias perceive themselves as the oppressed andexploited, and communal gatherings represent a humanis-tic outlet for sometimes overwhelming stress and emotions.Public displays of consumerism are a demonstration ofresilience to both foreign bureaucrats and fellow citizens,showing that the crisis has not destroyed sociality or socialstatus. Christina, 29, sits in a bar in Trikala, facing a wallwith the slogan “For five days you eat the cucumber, but onSaturday you are someone.”

We all know the stories of and feel on our skin (nio-thoume sto petsi mas) the famine during World War IIand the times when we had no private businesses oreven our own land. There is a sense that these times arevery close, but you can also see that people are still try-ing to live a normal life. On the streets of the towns thesmall takeaway restaurants are packed from morninguntil night as they advertise “special offers.” Greeks willalways want to drink their coffee and socialize in cafe-terias . . . Some hairdressers are thriving, as the womenmust still look their best and show in public that theyare not affected by the crisis . . . People are still goingon holiday, perhaps the destination has changed, butthey must go on holiday to keep up their status . . . Thebusinesses in the center of town and even the agricul-turalists are finding ways of serving existing demandsthat will not disappear just because we no longer haveso much money. These practices have social value, not

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just monetary. Like the slogan says, you must showyou are strong. You are still someone. [conversation inMarch 2013, Trikala]

By gathering in a public place, well dressed and withglass in hand, people demonstrate to themselves, eachother, and the invisible enforcer of financial austerity thatthey are not culturally extinct. They project a powerful pub-lic rhetoric that they, personally, are not affected in any pro-found way by crisis. The faceless administrator of painfuleconomic measures has not won; the opaque neoliberalsystem that dictates wage cuts, tax hikes, and job losses hasnot conquered the will of resilient citizens. Or, as Christinaputs it, “Merkel and Troika have not destroyed the Greekpeople . . . there is not a cucumber big enough to keep usdown.”

The slight paradox of participating in neoliberal con-sumption patterns despite open protest against the sys-tem is part of the “complex of opposites” entailed incapitalism (Muehlebach 2009, 2012:25; see also Gledhill2004:339; Haugerud 2010:127). But importantly, as the slo-gan poignantly emphasizes, “you are someone” regardlessof the crippling consequences of global political and eco-nomic power games. Attempts to incite resignation throughsystems of governance by what Benson and Kirsch term“structures of feeling that promote cynicism about the abil-ity to alter social structures” make resignation “a dominantmode of political action” (2010:474). By continuing to fre-quent cafeterias and adorn the body in fashionable cloth-ing, people show that they are not resigned to surrenderingtheir lives to increasing social suffering and poverty. The cu-cumber slogan is a tenacious call to arms to rouse resistanceagainst those who want to destroy activities at the center ofGreek social and material life. As Apostolis sums it up, “Peo-ple will have to eat the cucumber, but they will stay strongand rebel.”

Preexisting sociality is not destroyed overnight by neweconomic reform packages. As Sandhya Shukla has arguedregarding the social complexity of neoliberalism, “To sug-gest that new forms of organization wipe the slate cleanof long-standing investment is . . . untenable” (2010:177).The “existing cultural materials” (Muehlebach 2012:9) thatare consumer demands for clothes, coffees, and holidaysare historically constituted in long-established regionalconcepts of honor and social capital (Narotzky 2006, 2007;Pipyrou 2014a). These activities also offer opportunities forsocialization and relaxation, chances for people to escapethe all-encompassing stress of the pummeling crisis. Localbusinesses have tried to accommodate the need to “besomeone” by introducing special offers, happy hours, andloyalty cards, which in turn attract more customers (Knight2015b). Locals have also cut back on the number of drinks,holidays, and clothes they purchase. For instance, Vassilis,35, an unemployed former civil servant speaking in August

2013, is coping with the conflicting demands of statusmaintenance and fiscal restraints by “making one drink lastall night, taking a trip to a Greek Island and not Mauritius,and recycling clothes among family members.”

The maintenance of social persona in times of finan-cial squalor is not unique to Greece. In the context of SouthItaly, Pipyrou (2014a) has shown that people still striveto maintain their “beautiful appearance” (bella figura) intimes of economic austerity, as the social demand to wearexpensive-looking clothes is deeply embedded in the his-tory and micropolitics of the Mediterranean region. Sincethe onset of fiscal crisis, open-air secondhand clothes mar-kets have emerged in Calabrian towns, where, for as littleas €1, one can purchase (often, designer) clothes that havebeen donated from northern Europe. The new markets areproblematic, as, on the one hand, people do not want to beseen buying used clothes, as this would harm their socialstatus, but, on the other hand, they need to maintain bellafigura. The clothes markets are discussed by locals in termsof colonialism, secondhand citizenship, and aid. They alsovoice suspicion of mafia business interest in the import,sorting, and sale of the clothes.

The decision by people in central Greece and SouthItaly to invest their limited funds in public displays ofresilience and status maintenance highlighted in thecucumber slogan emphasizes the necessity to view ne-oliberalization as a culturally nuanced historical process(Peck and Theodore 2012:177). Economic rescue pack-ages orchestrated from the major epicenters of neoliberalpower attempt to fashion opinion at the grassroots leveland promote models of ideal economic practice (Harvey2005:88; see also Wacquant 2012:69). Social suffering asa consequence of austerity can thus be dismissed in theechelons of European government on the premise thateconomic justice is to be found in the market. In scorningthe Greek insistence on continuing to “waste” money incafeterias and on clothes, my Scandinavian friend, like theTroika policymakers, falls into the trap of essentializing notonly national identities but also the neoliberal process asbeing defined by a “set of universal political and economiccircumstances” (Chomsky 1996:95). Continuing “to besomeone” is an act of political agency defying the heavyhand of neoliberal reform.

“Food will win the war” (slogan unveiled byHerbert Clark Hoover, September 29, 1917)

Even as past slogans referencing food and critical eventshave been rediscovered, new phrases have been inventedand gained popularity. Here I briefly assess two influentialslogans with contrasting historical roots that are nonethe-less similar in their reference to food and moments ofthe past. The first, “Bread, Education, Freedom” (Psomi,Paideia, Eleftheria), was the slogan of the 1973 Athens

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Polytechnic demonstrations against the military dictator-ship and has become a national pillar for protest againstTroika austerity measures. It promotes what are regularlydescribed as “the three basic rights of all Greek citizens,”which, in 1973, after six years of autocratic rule, wereseverely inhibited. The second, “Antoni leave the Wi-Fi andgive food to the people” (Antoni ase to Wi-Fi kai dose stonlao na faei), first appeared in graffiti and on notices pinnedto telephone poles around Trikala in late 2013 in the contextof increasing hunger among the poorest citizens. The slogangained popularity after Facebook and Twitter campaignsagainst Prime Minister Antonis Samaras’s plans to providefree Wi-Fi access across Greece. Redeploying his policy as adismissive slogan, people recollect how out of touch theirprime minister is with the priorities of everyday citizens.The message contained in both slogans is rapidly spreadthrough social media and television coverage (cf. Brownand Theodossopoulos 2000; Haugerud 2010:123, 2013:166).

Bread, as I note above, now can be observed in diversecontexts as symbolic of national suffering and protest. Theslogan “Bread, Education, Freedom” unites a cross sectionof the Greek public in demanding basic rights and remind-ing the government of the priorities of its citizens. Aris, 63,explains,

Everyone knows about the polytechnic demonstra-tions. I was in Athens at the time [1973] and I re-member the chanting of the slogan “Bread, Education,Freedom.” I truly believe that the power of this sloganreminded all people, regardless of wealth or politi-cal persuasion, of the main things about being Greek.It even reminded people who were not 100 percentopposed to the dictatorship that some people werereally suffering . . . I believe that the power of the slo-gan and the passion in which we chanted it in 1973played a big role in bringing down the dictatorship andrestoring democracy. [conversation in December 2013,Kalampaka]

Aris truly believes in the power of words to effect realsocial change (cf. Holmes 2014). He says that bread has a“long history” in Greek imagination, since it is linked toideas of “famine and suppression” and is “central to the Or-thodox religion,” and that the regular use of bread in slo-gans is “not coincidental.” Arguably the most basic of foods,bread represents the inability of people to provide sufficientprovisions for their families during the late Ottoman era be-cause of land ownership reforms and through the wars ofthe 1940s and the 1967–74 dictatorship. Bread has become ageneric symbol of suffering and the ultimate way to expressbasic human needs for sustenance. Bread is a central orga-nizing metaphor for shared identity, commensality, ties tothe past, and collective moral legitimacy in the present.17 Inthe current economic crisis, “Bread, Education, Freedom”is chanted at protest rallies in urban centers, spray-painted

on walls, and discussed on social media websites. Overhear-ing my coffee-shop conversation in central Trikala, a youngGreek woman told me that the slogan had been “reborn” be-cause “living under the current austerity measures is akin toliving under a dictatorship.”

Bread is symbolic of past and present trajectories inother contexts of protest. Nefissa Naguib (2013:348) noteshow, in 1977, Egyptian protestors waved bread duringdemonstrations against plans to reduce food and fuel sub-sidies. In 2007 and 2011, protestors once again took tothe streets, bread held high above their heads or worn asa helmet, to demonstrate against rising food prices, de-manding the government provide “bread, dignity and jus-tice” (Naguib 2013:348). Naguib (2013:351–352) argues thatEgyptians recollect an undated near past when bread wasdelicious and plentiful and now want that old taste andquality of life back. In Egypt, as in Greece, with bread atthe center of social, political, and economic life, people canimagine a better future through an iconic item of food.

The slogan “Antoni leave the Wi-Fi and give food tothe people”—perfectly rhyming in Greek—also provides acritique of past and future political and economic trajec-tories (see Figure 3). In discourse, the slogan is usually in-terpreted as referring to past periods of hunger of the sortthat local people believe may once again be imminent. Itis a direct call for Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to ditcha controversial plan to provide free Wi-Fi access across thenation. My informants in Trikala are adamant that Sama-ras has got his priorities wrong and is completely out oftouch by shamelessly promoting a luxury product whenpeople’s basic needs are left unmet. Taunting a figure of po-litical power (cf. Brown and Theodossopoulos 2000, 2003;Haugerud 2013:11), the slogan demonstrates how, on thebasis of past experiences of hunger, people resent the sym-bolic gesture of futuricity and modernity provided by freeWi-Fi. They are also suspicious of the reasons behind theprime minister’s sudden passion to provide Wi-Fi connec-tivity. Voula, 50, is animated in her response to my questionsabout the relevance of the Wi-Fi scheme,

Who needs Wi-Fi? People are searching throughgarbage bins in Athens to find food. This hasn’t hap-pened in Greece since World War II and the Famine.[She counts on her fingers.] Immigration, unemploy-ment, starvation, corruption, medical care, education,petrol prices, heating the home, drug trafficking, andselling Greek islands, these are problems . . . but Wi-Fi! Ha! Wi-Fi will save the country, feed my children,pay for my heating bills. He [Samaras] must be get-ting something out of it. He is as corrupt as the rest ofthem [politicians] and must have done a deal with a bigcompany. Either that or he is trying to distract publicattention whilst he passes another controversial taxa-tion law. Nonsense, absolute nonsense. [conversationin January 2014, Trikala]

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Figure 3. “Antoni leave the Wi-Fi and give food to the people,” a sign at a junction on the main Trikala-Kalampaka road in Thessaly, January 2014. Photoby Daniel Knight.

The slogan’s phrase “give food to the people” can lit-erally be translated “give to the people to eat” and, I sug-gest, is symbolic of the general desire to return to times ofcomfortable living, like the period before the crisis. Perhapssimilar to the ironic slogan “I’m starving, bail me out” dis-played by the satirical Billionaire activists at the time of the2008 financial crash (Haugerud 2010:114), the Wi-Fi sloganmay have a twisted meaning. In invoking powerful publicconcepts of hunger, it suggests that the redistribution ofgovernment money currently in the hands of the wealthyfew can rectify falling living standards. This is not to sug-gest that Pangalos was right when implying that all Greekcitizens were corrupt and equally culpable for the financialcollapse—thus bypassing the role of Western banks in mak-ing the financial decisions that contributed to the crisis—or that Greece is more corrupt than other EU countries.Rather, the slogan could be interpreted as a nostalgic re-flection on years of prosperity when people did not have toworry about money as well as the general belief that an eliteminority continues to profit from the financial turmoil. Theslogan asks the government to provide money for citizens,rather than endorse luxuries such as Wi-Fi, at a time whenmany fear a recurrence of famine. Desperate and fearing areturn to historically known levels of starvation and violentconflict, some of my interlocutors feel that the governmentshould be providing for the everyday citizen—“giving themmoney to eat,” to allocate as they please and not go hungry.

This slogan is not a declaration that Troika are right inadministering punitive measures but an acknowledgmentthat circumstances have dramatically changed and life ismuch more difficult nowadays. Vassilis’s comments are rep-resentative in justifying the acceptance of what is locally

termed “free money”: “What were we supposed to do overthe past 30 years, turn down this money? The governmentassured us it was okay to accept. They never told us it wasgoing to end in tragedy.” He says that he “longs for eas-ier times” and that he wishes he had “realized earlier thatthings were too good to be true.” Nevertheless, Vassilis in-sists that the government should now provide money for“everyday people to live at least a minimal existence” as theruling elite “continue to get fat through money eating” (onmoney, eating, and power, cf. Argenti 2007; Bayart 1989).

Following discussions with people like Vassilis, I sug-gest that, as well as drawing on notions of past tragedy inthe form of hunger, the Wi-Fi slogan also shows that peo-ple would rather the government provide small amounts ofmoney to facilitate a more comfortable lifestyle for the ma-jority of citizens than spend it on technology (western Thes-saly was only recently connected to broadband Internet).Ioanna, a 60-year-old housewife, observes,

Some people would certainly rather have their share ofthe money to eat than think about their future basedon technology that they are not familiar with . . . I cantell you for sure that nobody cares about Wi-Fi. I don’tmean that people want to “eat” because they are cor-rupt, but they want some money that they can allocateas they please to make their lives a little easier. I am surethat the Wi-Fi slogan does also refer to this, a plea toprovide money to the everyday person and end the tor-ture of austerity. [conversation in January 2014, Trikala]

The slogan emphasizes the immense pain and suffer-ing brought about by neoliberal reform as people lamentthe lies, broken promises, and absurdity of the political elite.

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Vassilis says that with “years of famine in front of us . . . howcan they [politicians] justify holding all the wealth them-selves and promoting ridiculous policies like Wi-Fi? . . . Iwant to tell them to give us the money they waste on theseprograms so that I can allocate it myself.”

Conclusions

Slogans draw attention to the past to champion alterna-tive futures as people challenge Troika neoliberal reformpackages and government promises of modernity andprogress. Although slogans protest the current neoliberalreform packages, they celebrate the years of prosperitythat some enjoyed from the 1980s onward, which arepopularly perceived as an epiphenomenon of opening upGreece to international markets in the 1980s and 1990s(cf. Pryce 2012; Varoufakis 2013).18 Since the 1980s, peoplehave lived with a government advocating neoliberalismwhile simultaneously taking advantage of deeply engrainedclientelistic practices such as exchanging favors in returnfor votes, finding prestigious jobs for friends and family,and accepting bribes in return for contracts to improvetransport infrastructure (Featherstone 2008; see also Camp-bell 1964; for Italy and Malta, see Boissevain 1974). Throughironic slogans, people in western Thessaly now expresstheir fears of returning to a past perceived as premodern orpre-European. For instance, the cost of heating the homewith petrol-powered central heating is now beyond the ma-jority of Trikalinoi, leading to a return to wood-fueled openfires and stoves “not seen since the 1960s” and “associatedwith peasant life” (Stavros, 66, retired teacher, Trikala, De-cember 2013). Lower-wage Trikalinoi claim that they were“promised that Greece was European, was Western, wasmodern” but now they have been “thrown back in time to anera before the [1967–74] dictatorship” (for extensive anal-ysis of temporality and the “energy problem,” see Knight2014a). Other fears include the return to times of hunger lastexperienced during the Great Famine of 1941–43, percep-tions of a new German occupation, and the reappearance oflandlord–tenant relations akin to those of the late Ottomanera (Knight 2015a). The slogans simultaneously destabilizeand reinforce discursive frames of neoliberalism and gov-ernance. Consumerism and increased expendable incomeare desirable, but the erosion of cultural belonging andself-identity and the lack of political accountability are not.

This contradiction is partially due to the “incompleteand uneven character of capitalist penetration” in Greece(Seremetakis 1994:39; also Featherstone 2008) since EUaccession, and it is here that ethnography permits deeperunderstandings of neoliberal reform as localized, nuanced,and lived. Especially in rural areas such as western Thes-saly, since the liberalization of Greek markets in the 1980s,socioeconomic life has developed into a complex amalgamof neoliberal rhetoric and “traditional” modes such as

patronage and clientelism (cf. Featherstone 2008).Throughout the 1990s, government rhetoric emphasiz-ing Greece’s belonging to the neoliberal West was used tojustify increasing national debt and changing consumptionpatterns and helped obscure the clientelistic state. Forthree decades, this fusion generally meant that peoplecould benefit from the best of both worlds (Narotzky2004:57, 2006:338). The cultural dimensions of “doingeconomics” on clientelistic bases, coupled with state pol-icy advocating immersion in global markets, left peopleexceptionally vulnerable to the negative impacts of the2008 global economic downturn and ensuing austeritymeasures, hardship that is expressed through reference topast events and culturally embedded metaphors of food.The slogans thus highlight the real impacts of decades ofpolitical decisions and economic policy.

Food is ever present in the discontent with austerity inGreece and is the primary medium through which peopleraise warnings from the past. Items of food denote culturalbelonging, national and local pride, collective hardship, andshared history. Food also constitutes the ultimate embodi-ment of crisis—if you do not eat, you will die. Slogans in-cite collective victimhood and solidarity in opposition tofaceless systems and help promote the priorities of every-day people as they struggle against hegemonic political andeconomic policies and practices.

Slogans provide an avenue to express political agencyin the face of the juggernaut that is neoliberal reform.Haugerud puts it expertly: “Plotted as satire, an eco-nomic meltdown is not a force of nature or freak accidentbut rather the entirely preventable outcome of politicsand policy” (2013:10). Irony and satire reclaim political ac-countability where there is none and, in the Greek case, em-phasize the universal belief that everyday citizens are beingpersecuted by people rather than an abstract self-regulatingmarket (in the context of Malaysian villages, see Scott 1985).Slogans locate the causes of and possible solutions to thecrisis and the role of specified external forces in dismantlingthe state (Clarke 2008:136; Harvey 2003). Elaborate austeritymeasures not only contribute to the dispossession of publicand private property but also attempt to destroy the materi-ality of cultural identity—including relationships with foodand commensality. Austerity has become associated withfears of economic colonization, political authoritarianism,and a return to past eras of hardship. These insecuritiesare highlighted in slogans aimed at defying the disas-trous economic circumstances while drawing attentionto what is perceived as the corrupt, meddling influenceof authority figures in the governance of the neoliberalausterity program. In short, this study illustrates that anethnography of neoliberal reform as actually lived can helpus understand the complex ways people relate to dramaticshifts in economic policy, expressing their political agencythrough narratives of victimhood, resistance, and solidarity.

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Satirical slogans help locate accountability for economiccrisis within a system often portrayed as abstract andfaceless.

Postscript

Alexis Tsipras, leader of the left-wing antiausterity SYRIZAparty, came to power after a general election held on Jan-uary 25, 2015. His campaign was based on promises to rene-gotiate the terms of the international bailout agreement andrestore hope and dignity to the nation. Given past experi-ences, many of my research participants are very cautiousregarding the promises of new governments. The new fi-nance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, has demonstrated consid-erable strength by telling Troika representatives face-to-face“we cannot work with you.” But SYRIZA is a disparate party,made up of numerous small left-wing constituents—formermembers of the center-left PASOK, staunch communists,euroskeptics, liberals, and more conservative antiausteritycampaigners—all pulling in different directions with com-peting priorities. To complicate matters further, SYRIZAformed a coalition government with the right-wing anti-austerity Independent Greeks party. The election of SYRIZAwas most certainly a vote against Troika austerity and thetwo-party political establishment that had run Greece sincethe fall of the junta in 1974. Standing up to the injusticeof Troika austerity is a popular position, but other policies,such as reintroducing the “14 wages per year” system andincreasing the minimum wage, and the promise that peo-ple will be able to return to the living standards of precri-sis years (including the common perception that personalbank loans will once again be freely available) do worrysome citizens.

The election immediately provided a great source forpolitical satire, especially on the television program Ra-dio Arvila (Radio Arvila S8/E9 2015), which lambasted bothends of the political spectrum (and included the appear-ance of a cucumber in reference to austerity and an ironicmention of New Democracy plans for free Wi-Fi). Varo-ufakis and Tsipras have become subjects of satire as muchas their predecessors—caricatured for their “cool” fashionsense, laid-back public personas, and Tsipras’s problemswith the English language (Radio Arvila S8/E10 2015). Thesatire often highlights public disbelief, or at least caution,about the new government’s economic promises.

Notes

Acknowledgments. Nicolette Makovicky inspired me to startinvestigating crisis slogans after a conversation at the 2013 Amer-ican Anthropological Association meetings in Chicago. StavroulaPipyrou provided insightful comments throughout the writing pro-cess, and Elisabeth Kirtsoglou, Charles Stewart, and DimitriosTheodossopoulos gave constructive feedback, either oral or writ-ten, while David Sutton and Christina Toren offered exciting per-spectives on slogans and food. Discussions with Nicolas Argenti,

Victoria Goddard, Renee Hirschon, and Susana Narotzky alsoshaped parts of this article. Angelique Haugerud provided inspi-ration, as well as unparalleled guidance and encouragement, forwhich I am truly thankful. I am also grateful to Linda Forman forher meticulous copyediting.

1. Focaal (51[1], 2008), Social Anthropology (20[1–4], 2012), andCultural Anthropology (27[1], 2012) have recently hosted extensivedebates on the nature of neoliberalism.

2. In 2012, government debt hit 170 percent of GDP. At the endof 2014, debt to GDP stood at 174.9 percent (Trading Economics2014).

3. I have conducted research in western Thessaly since 2003,returning for approximately three months each year, with an18-month visit in 2007–09. My research participants represent across section of society; some of my closest informants includea university professor, a dentist, a hairdresser, and farm laborers.Some elderly informants are well into their nineties and recall suchevents as the 1930s depression and 1940s Axis occupation andsubsequent civil war, and unemployed youth recently graduatedfrom high school also form part of my company. The politicalallegiance of my research participants is equally diverse—andsome have changed sides over the course of the decade—fromleft-wing Communist Party (KKE) supporters to families loyal tothe two main political parties of the past 30 years, namely, thecenter-right New Democracy and center-left PASOK, and, in onecase, a supporter of the far-right Golden Dawn party. Despite theirsocial and political diversity, my research participants seem unitedin their general disapproval of Troika austerity measures and theperceived victimization of Greece.

4. With reference to resistance to and complicity with auster-ity measures in Greece, Theodossopoulos (2014), argues for a “de-pathologizing” of local indignant discourse. Both John Campbell(e.g., 1964) and Michael Herzfeld (e.g., 1985, 1997) have discussedlocal modes of resistance in Greece at length.

5. Sutton has also discussed his views at the 2013 AmericanAnthropological Association meetings in Chicago and the 2013“Democracy in Crisis: Crisis in Democracy” workshop at DurhamUniversity.

6. Haugerud (2013:63) notes how the slogan “Because we’re allin this together, sort of” is an ironic commentary on the shreddingof the social safety net.

7. In West Africa, the fear of hunger and fear of the insatiable ap-petites of the political business elites are “twin demons” (Argenti2007:110). As Jean-Francois Bayart (1989) points out in Cameroon,myriad subtleties of the trope of eating encompass every form ofpolitical life, especially the accumulation of wealth as a result ofcrime, graft, and corruption. Both Bayart and Nicolas Argenti ex-plore local idioms that construe the belly as the source of power.

8. Official website: http://www.antenna.gr/minisites/radioar-vyla/. Episodes are also available on YouTube.

9. Haugerud (2013) offers an extraordinary account of how satirecan be employed to engage with serious political and economic is-sues. She shows how members of a satirical network known as “theBillionaires” confront the increasing U.S. wealth gap by challeng-ing the political and economic status quo through satire, humor,and irony. In ways similar to those encountered in central Greece,they employ ironic and satirical slogans such as “Corporations arepeople too,” “Still loyal to big oil,” and “Taxes are not for everyone”to raise awareness of their cause.

10. For discussion of affective history in Greece and Cyprus, seeStewart 2012, Navaro-Yashin 2012, and Pipyrou 2014b.

11. Herzfeld (1985) explains how Cretan shepherds employ thenotion of hunger to justify stealing livestock. His informants insistthat they were hungry under Turkish rule and then again under the

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German occupation, so they had to steal to fend off starvation (eventhough they stole flocks from other Cretans and not the enemy),and today a young Cretan “may still plausibly cite hunger as his mo-tive for stealing several sheep in a night’s work” (Herzfeld 1985:21).Hunger is an integral idiom through which to express ideologicalnotions of oppression and deprivation (Herzfeld 1985:22).

12. Sutton (2013:347) notes that food plays a significant role inglobalization and neoliberal business, citing, for instance, the pri-vatization of collective resources and the global impact of chainssuch as McDonald’s. For more on the perceived link between Mc-Donald’s and conditions of economic crisis and prosperity, seeLoftsdottir 2014.

13. Another variation of this saying reads “Life is a cucumberthat some people eat and it refreshes them; others eat and cry inpain” [I zoi einai aggouri pou allos to troei kai drosizetai kai allos totroei kai zorizetai].

14. See Theodossopoulos and Kirtsoglou 2009 on local re-sponses to globalization, cosmopolitanism, and perceptions of for-eign interference.

15. According to Herzfeld (1997:95), as a powerful component ofnational ideology, successive degrees of social inclusion and exclu-sion are structured to produce collective solidarity.

16. As early as the 1960s, Ernestine Friedl (1962:44) noted thatclothing signified a family’s degree of modernity and provokedneighborly competition.

17. Sheila Lecoeur (2013) notes in her documentary film “A Bas-ket of Food: Greece in the 1940s” that during the 1940s GreatFamine people on the island of Syros made “brush bread,” addingstraws from brooms to the flour.

18. From 1967 to 1974, Greece was under military dictatorshipwith a very rigid inward-looking economic policy (as documentedin the Ministry of Coordination’s 1968 Economic Development Planfor Greece, 1968–1972). Joining the EEC in 1981 and opening up tointernational markets provided access to programs that had pre-viously been inaccessible. Many of my informants, and academics,associate this era with the introduction of “Western capitalism” intoGreece (e.g., see Featherstone 2008; Kamaras 2001). As an epiphe-nomenon of the new economic scene, coupled with the publicperception of abundant wealth and, as James Faubion (1993) andHerzfeld (1997) have argued, a political confidence that Greecefinally “belonged to the West” (see also Clogg 1992), the pop-ulist center-left PASOK government expanded the public sector, in-creased wages, and improved pensions (Clogg 1992). Greece reliedon cheap imports from the Balkans (Kamaras 2001), and freedom ofmovement in the EEC also meant that package tourism flourished.The EEC model both expanded the potential markets for smallGreek businesses and helped small-scale entrepreneurs to accessnew sources of European funding—from programs for agricultural-ists to schemes for local people to set up their own businesses (in-cluding travel agents, hairdressers, and automobile mechanics; seeKnight 2015a). Gradual market deregulation during the early 1990ssaw the boom of two distinctive practices that had great impact atthe grassroots level—easy access to bank loans for leisure purposesand a nationwide phenomenon of playing the stock markets (for ananthropological analysis of the 1999–2000 stock market crash, seeKnight 2012b). Some academics claim that Greece has never been“truly neoliberal” because of continued clientelistic practices andpopulist political policies of the governing PASOK and New Democ-racy parties (Featherstone 2008). Troika representatives have notedthat the 2010 austerity package was a result of Greece not prop-erly following the “neoliberal path” it was offered in the 1980s. InDecember 2014, the leader of the radical left-wing party SYRIZA,Alexis Tsipras, declared that it was time to end the “neoliberal ex-periment” in favor of “a model of social protection and growth”

(Queally 2014). Similarly, some research participants place theblame for the current austerity measures on “unrestrained neolib-eralism” and the unregulated nature of international markets, lo-cating the blame in the aftermath of the 1981 EEC accession.

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Daniel M. KnightAnthropology DepartmentDurham UniversityDawson Building, South RoadDurham, DH1 3LEUnited Kingdom

[email protected]

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