by Pavlos Roufos (Author)
About the Author
Pavlos Roufos has been active in Greece’s social movements since the 1990s and has written on Greece and the economic crisis for the Brooklyn Rail and Jungle World. He has worked as a film editor and is currently a researcher on German economic policy at the University of Kassel.
About this book
Since 2010, Greece’s social and economic conditions have been irreversibly transformed due to austerity measures imposed by the European troika and successive Greek governments. These stringent restructuring programs were intended to make it possible for Greece to avoid default and improve its debt position, and to reconfigure its economy to escape forever the burden of past structural deficiencies. But things have not gone according to plan. Eight years later, none of these targets have been met. If the programs were doomed to fail from the start, as many claim, what were the real objectives of such devastating austerity?
In this latest installment in Reaktion's Field Notes series, published in association with the Brooklyn Rail, Pavlos Roufos answers this key question in an insightful, critical analysis of the origins and management of the 2010 Greek economic crisis. Setting the crisis in its historical context, Roufos explores the creation of the Eurozone, its “glorious” years, and today’s political threats to its existence. By interweaving stories of individual people’s lived experiences and describing in detail the politicians, policies, personalities, and events at the heart of the collapse, he situates its development both in terms of the particularities of the Greek economy and society and the overall architecture of Europe’s monetary union. This broad examination also illuminates the social movements that emerged in Greece in response to the crisis, unpacking what both the crisis managers and many of their critics presented as a given: that a happy future is a thing of the past.
Brief contents
Introduction 7
one A Thing of the Past 11
two The Monetarist Transformation 24
three A Green Sun 41
four ‘Holy Cow!’ 66
five The ‘Greek’ Crisis 77
six Years of Stone 86
seven After the End 122
Epilogue: The Future is Not What
It Used to Be 158
References 169
Acknowledgements 213
Index 215
Series: Field Notes
Pages: 224 pages
Publisher: Reaktion Books (October 15, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1780239858
ISBN-13: 978-1780239859