By Christos Giovanopoulos The Solidarity Schools in Greece were created in the context of the crisis to counter the acute increase of inequalities in education. At the same time, they have been laboratories of self-organised educational structures. Moreover, their practices are integrated within broader solidarity networks as autonomous learning communities. By putting democracy and mutualism at the core of their organizational function and pedagogic practices they renegotiate the ways in which self-organised structures of education and of knowledge production and sharing liaise with their local (or more expanded) communities. This weekend the Solidarity Schools convene for first time in a two-day meeting in order to “further our democratic way of operating… to deconstruct the teacher-centered way of understanding education and learning and to construct the visionary frame of decentralized, autonomous and non-hierarchical educational communities”, as they state in the meeting’s call. In that way they aim “to cultivate a cohesive visionary frame for our role, to better describe our goals, to highlight and empower «good» practices on the educational spectrum… to defend education as a common good, to continue to reclaim by creating!”, as their invitation concludes. Foregrounding the creative and socially innovative properties of their attempt has been one of the foundational qualities of the solidarity schools, which makes them stand apart from other ‘demand orientated’ (towards the state and public authorities) movements in education. The two-day meeting aims to enhance such prefigurative and transformative function of the Solidarity Schools’ Network and of other alternative educational endeavors. The program of the meeting includes sessions and workshops on the solidarity schools as communities of participatory action and democracy; on their relation with the social and solidarity economy and the commons; on social pedagogy and communities of learning; on interculturalism and the education of immigrants and refugees; on gender identity and equality in/and education. It must also be noted that the meeting aspires to connect with analogous experiences from outside Greece. To this aim collectives, educationalists and researchers from Italy, Switzerland, France, UK, Turkey and Germany have been invited and will also take part in the procedures. Those delegates represent also a variety of formal and informal educational and community based institutions, which share nevertheless their critical and reforming attitude towards a more inclusive, participatory and democratic mode of education and pedagogy. Infra-demos, has been part of the organizing group of the two-day meeting from its outset. Infra-demos has contributed specifically to the organizing and facilitation of the session on the relation between the solidarity schools, solidarity economies and the commons. The session will develop in two axes. Firstly, drawing by the experience of the solidarity schools will attempt to show the different perception that they cultivate in regard to resource management, economic relations and transactions, based on use value through practices of mutualism and free exchange. The second focus will be on the relationship of the solidarity schools with their local communities, available resources and know-how, and with the existing municipal framework. The aim is to start imaging and working out institutional formats and changes that need to be achieved in order the autonomous educational communities to be sustainable. For those interested you can find more in: http://meeting.solidarityschools.gr/en/
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AbdouMaliq Simone
Research Professor of Sociology Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity Lila Leontidou Professor of Geography University of Peloponnese Dimitris Dalakoglou Professor of Social Anthropology Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (infra-demos) Chaired by Yannis Kallianos Post-Doc Fellow in Anthropology Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (infra-demos) May 12th, 2018 Netherlands Institute at Athens, Makri 11, 117 42 Plaka 18:00-20:30 Following the seminar that infra-demos.net organised in November 2017 in Amsterdam, at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, we would like to invite you to our next seminar which will take place in Athens in collaboration with the Netherlands Institute at Athens. The seminar will focus on the relationship between infrastructure and crisis to discuss everyday innovations associated to socio-technological forms of participation arising within the infrastructural gap (IG). The infrastructural gap (IG) which emerged in the West after the rupture of the 2008 crisis refers to the difficulty of the state and private sector to sustain infrastructural networks. At issue is the fact that within this new infrastructural condition transformative potentials and innovative socio-technical practices have risen to produce innovative forms of civil activity, and thus explore non institutional ways of political participation. Infrastructures lie at the core of this process, both as sites of contestation where the previous model of urban governance can be challenged and as spaces through which technological innovations and new crisis-resilient socio-technological systems can emerge. The seminar touches upon these issues and beyond in order to explore the production of infrastructural relations in times of crisis and turmoil. The seminar is co-organized by the infra-demos project, the Netherlands Institute at Athens (NIA) and the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The seminar will take place at the Netherlands Institute at Athens (NIA), Makri St. 11, Athens, 11742, from 18:00-20:30 followed by a wine reception. We look forward to seeing you there. The Principal Investigator of infra-demos, Dimitris Dalakoglou is involved also as the PI (together with Dimitris Pavlopoulos of VU Sociology) in the project PRECARIAT that studies the deregulation of labour market in Europe, focusing empirically in Greece. PRECARIAT just launched its website, whilst its publications are expected soon. PRECARIAT is funded from the Institute of Societal Resilience and the departments of Sociology and Social & Cultural Anthropology of Vrije University Amsterdam (VU).
Blog by Christos Giovanopoulos
On Tuesday November 21st infra-demos project went public for the first time in the squatted social centre De Verrekijker in the Vrije University Amsterdam. The research team, comprised by Prof. Dimitris Dalakoglou, post-doc Yannis Kalianos and the PhD researcher Christos Giovanopoulos, presented the basic outline and objectives of the project. The infra-demos research team presented the approach of the program based on an analysis of the transition from infrastructural Gap to new participatory forms of infrastructures. Dalakoglou introduced the notions of infrastructural gap and infrastructural citizenship as the two central pillars that will be employed in the research. He also pointed out the techno-social conceptualization of infrastructures, as means for maintaining or challenging social consensus and political order. By analysing the crisis of the dominant infrastructural model in recent years and by focusing on the potential of emerging infrastructures based on social participation, the project aims to bring to light alternative models of infrastructural democracy beyond the state and the market frameworks and to examine also their viability to evolve and upscale. As the primary research field would be in crisis ridden Greece, he also addressed the relevance – and not exclusivity – of the Greek case for the rest of Europe regarding shifting patterns and re-modeling of the dominant infrastructural model and policies. Kallianos focused on “large” (scale) or “hard” infrastructures as a site of socio-political contestation during times of crisis. He referred to a series of “infrastructural conflicts” occurred in Greece since 2010, which while challenging the dominant political imaginaries opened also a space for social participation and antagonistic models and concepts of infrastructures to emerge. In that respect, they provide material for a (re-)conceptualization of the politics of infrastructure, which infra-demos aspires to bring to the fore. Giovanopoulos presented the plethora of grassroots social solidarity structures created by popular initiative to respond to a severe crisis of social reproduction in Greece. Such examples have nurtured “soft” infrastructures and a practice of infrastructural consolidation mingled with practices of grassroots democracy. As such they suggest a rather integrated and organic process through which local communities renegotiate (and reclaim) their techno-social relationship with the infrastructural domain. He also briefly referred to his intended engaged and participatory methodology and its relation with the co-design and testing of upgrading and networking of the observed citizen-run infrastructural raw material. The presentations were followed by a lively discussion regarding the relationship of the crisis as a trigger for such bottom-up social inventiveness, the sustainability of such endeavors beyond the crisis, the upscaling (vi)ability, or not, of such community based examples and the relevance or peculiarity of the Greek case for other economic and socio-political contexts, to mention but a few. Regarding especially that latter question, two days after our event the Financial Times hosted an article that confirmed infra-demos’ argument and main hypothesis of a systemic crisis on the current infrastructural model in the case of entire Europe (Jones 2017). Rather than a coincidence, the appearance of such article grounds infra-demos research and approach to upcoming theoretical and policy making challenges. As infra-demos research team we would like to thank everyone who honored us with their presence, their remarks, questions and contributions in the launch event of infra-demos. References Europe’s spending on infrastructure at ‘chronic’ low level FT, 23 Nov. 2017, Claire Jones in Frankfurt, EVENT: Infrastructural Crisis, Commons and Anthropology: Launch of VIDI project infra-demos6/11/2017 infra-demos, the NWO-VIDI project based at the department of Anthropology at Vrije University Amsterdam
is going to be launched in Amsterdam in an event where the core team will present aspects of the project. A talk and presentation by Dimitris Dalakoglou, PI of infra-demos and Professor of Social Anthropology, VU Yiannis Kallianos infra-demos postdoc researcher in Anthropology, VU Christos Giovanopoulos infra-demos doctoral researcher in Anthropology, VU November 21 15:00-17:00 In De Verrekijker Vrije University Amsterdam campus De Boelelaan 1085, 1081 HV Amsterdam infra-demos was launched on 1st of September 2017. That same month the Principal Investigator of the project, Dimitris Dalakoglou, have 3 lectures in the context of international events. He was the keynote lecturer for the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Anthropological Association of Ireland held at Queen's University of Belfast, where he talked about the future of infrastructures. He was also one of the keynote speakers for the conference Theorising Mobility and Transnationalism held at the University of Iceland in Reykiavik where he talked about European crisis and new regimes of mobility and flows. Furthermore in September he also gave an invited lecture at Heteropolitics conference held in Aristotle University in Thessaloniki.
Moreover, in late October 2017 he was a speaker at the Place-making week organised from the Project for Public Spaces and held in Amsterdam, where he talked about gentrification in Amsterdam and soft infrastructures. In late August 2017, just a few days before the start of the project he was invited speaker at the Summer University of Social Movements, organised by ATTAC France at the University of Toulouse where he participated int he panel tilted: 'What kind of capitalism we are living in?'. Blog by Christos Giovanopoulos
infra-demos was present at the Festival of the Commons 2017 in Athens. With the Omnia sunt Communia (all things are/in common) as moto, last weekend at the School of Fine Arts in Athens, over 65 collectives met in the first Festival of Commons. Albeit first under this name, the festival has been a collaboration of the Commonsfest and of the Festival of Solidarity and Cooperative Economy. Two events that were taking place in the last five years and which joined forces to create the Festival of Commons (FoC). Yet, the FoC has been the result of the newly formed Alliance of Commons and its first big public event. With over 75 presentations, workshops and panels the festival gathered the majority of those active on the fields of the commons, of the self-managed cooperative movement and of the social and solidarity economy in Greece and also many international participants. Its meetings included, among other, the assemblies of the Network of the Social Solidarity Economy Entities in Attica and of the Panhellenic Network of Cooperative Solidarity Economy Groups, as well as the assembly of the Alliance of Commons the last day. It also hosted panel discussions among the movements resisting privatizations and natural resources grabbing, such as the Chalkidiki SOS against the goldmining in Skouries, the movements against the privatization of the old airport of Athens in Ellinikon and of the park of Plato’s Academy and the movement against the dam in Acheloos river. The discussions with Michel Bauwens on open cooperative networks, on Friday evening, and with Steven Forti, from Barcelona En Comu, on City – Demos – Commons, on Saturday, attracted the interest of the participants and opened up new perspectives in strategizing for the commons and / through the development of a kind of politics that corresponds to the practices and concept of the Commons. Moreover, rich cultural activities and workshops took place throughout the three days including a three-day festival of cinematic and visual commons. Besides the political and cultural events, the festival hosted a fair-trade space with 32 productive projects and coops, and a solidarity and barter economy corner. The festival aimed not only to bring together, celebrate and provide visibility of the active endeavors for the Commons and Social and Solidarity Economy in Greece, but to contribute to the creation and facilitation of productive synergies among the participants, in order to nurtures cross-fertilization and to instigate projects of capacity building. It consists, thus, the first attempt of the Alliance of Commons to introduce a methodology which emphasizes in the production of concrete tools and processes, of the creation of working groups around specific tasks, aiming in the conception, planning, testing and prototyping of sustainable examples and practices, which can enlarge the entire ecosystem of the Commons, self-managed cooperatives and grassroots solidarity economy. The number of proposals and synergies which were presented as mature to kick off in the closing assembly of the Alliance of the Commons, is promising for more to come from the Greek grassroots. For more you can look at: http://www.commons.gr/ Infra-Demos project was launched in September 2017. Infra-Demos is a five-year long project studying Infrastructural Gap and the wider challenges of the current infrastructural models along the emergence of new forms of infrastructures. The empirical focus is in Greece, nevertheless the findings and the utilisation of the research aims to extent well-beyond the case study.
The Principal Investigator is Dimitris Dalakoglou, who is Professor of Social Anthropology at Vrije University Amsterdam, the postdoc researcher is Yannis Kallianos and the PhD researcher is Christos Giovanopoulos. The project starts with an extensive network of societal partners such as RIPPEX Europe, Komvos of Social, Solidarity and Cooperative Economy, Peer2Peer Lab etc. |
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