Something more than offering help! Exploring the links between Solidarity and Social Movement initiatives in Greece in times of Economic Crisis

The current economic crisis imposed significantly on the everyday needs for a considerable part of the Greek population. Austerity-stricken Greece is characterized by the collapse of the welfare state and by increasingly uncovered basic needs. To confront this humanitarian problem thousands formal and informal initiatives and organizations organized solidarity actions, such as barter networks, food banks, consumers – producers networks, soup kitchens, new cooperatives, social economy enterprises, free legal advice etc. Despite those organizations’ role in covering needs there are also signs that they make claims for social or political change. Under this light, these actions might also be seen as political claims and actions. The aim of this paper is to study the characteristics and patterns of organizations and bottom-up initiatives, their actions and claims and the extent to which these formal and informal organizations provide solidarity in Greece during the economic as well as to investigate their links with social movements. According to the recent literature, the emergence of solidarity and alternative groups is probably connected with social movements, collective action and in many cases is related to political and environmental activism. Thus the key questions that the paper aims to answer are, whether solidarity actions in Greece during the crisis also represent a claim for social or economic change. If they do, to which extent can these actions be classified as a social movement and more specifically as a solidarity movement? The paper offers fresh empirical data provided by the research project “LIVEWHAT* — LIVING WITH HARD TIMES, How Citizens React to Economic Crises and Their Social and Political Consequences”, under Work Package 6 Alternative Forms of Resilience. The method applied is called Alternative Action Organization Analysis (AAOA) and is an innovative content analysis approach deriving from protest event and political claims analysis, which created for the needs of the project and uses online media sources. *EC FP7, http://www.livewhat.unige.ch/