'Contagious' solidarity: reconfiguring care and citizenship in Greece's social clinics. (May 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Cabot, Heath
• Is Part Of: Social anthropology. Volume 24:Number 2(2016:May)
• Page Start: 152
• Page End: 166
• Publication Date: 2016-05
• Subjects: solidarity -- pharmacies -- clinics -- Greece -- austerity; solidarité -- pharmacies -- cliniques -- austérité -- Grèce; Ethnology -- Europe -- Periodicals; Europe -- Social life and customs -- Periodicals; 306
• DOI: 10.1111/1469-8676.12297
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0964-0282

Abstract

Abstract: In response to growing numbers of people unable to access national healthcare, networks of 'social solidarity' clinics/pharmacies have emerged throughout Greece. These clinics/pharmacies redistribute donated medicines, and they provide care through networks of volunteers. They thus seek to respond to the growing 'contagion' of austerity in Greece with what some describe as 'contagious' solidarity. Discourses regarding social health also permeate the clinics. Solidarity is often described as the 'other face' of the crisis, which has brought group participation into the centre of Greek citizenship. Research participants, however, also reflect ambivalently on their work, exposing solidarity's entanglement in austerity politics and neoliberal subjectivity.