Description

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The austerity crisis has radically altered the economic landscape of Southern Europe. But alongside the decimation of public services and infrastructure lies the wreckage of a generation's visions for the future. In Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, there is a new, difficult reality of downward mobility.

Grassroots Economies interrogates the effects of the economic crisis on the livelihood of working people, providing insight into their anxieties. Drawing on a rich seam of ethnographic material, it is a distinctive comparative analysis that explores the contradictions of their coping mechanisms and support structures.

With a focus on gender, the book explores values and ideologies, including dispossession and accumulation. Ultimately it demonstrates that everyday interactions on the local scale provide a significant sense of the global.

About the Author

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Susan Narotzky is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Barcelona, Spain. She is Secretary of the American Anthropological Association and past President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists.

Praise For…

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'Grassroots Economies offers an astute and heartbreaking account of the toll decades of austerity politics have taken on southern Europe. Each chapter offers remarkable insights taken together they present a sober and illuminating portrait of dispossession and loss.'
— Jane Collins, author of 'The Politics of Value: Three Movements to Change How We Think about the Economy'