Research Team 2:
"Civil society in the daily press: social and political dimensions"

RT2 focuses on the social and political dimensions of the public action taken by ‘civil society’ agents in the period from the fall of the dictatorship to the rise to power of PASOK. The daily press is selected as principal primary source because it was the prevailing means of public intervention and communication during that period.

The research objectives are: a) to create a corpus of source material that will help future researchers; and b) to contribute to the creation of explanatory frameworks concerning the domestic ‘civil society’. The research explores how formal and informal collectivities participate in the public dialogue and affect historical developments through a complex network of power relations. The social and political context of the years after the fall of the dictatorship is a compelling field of inquiry for the examination of social and political demands, the relationships between the state and the ‘civil society’, and the dynamic of the latter. The ethnography of the voluntary associations at the beginning of the 21st century aims at exploring the micro-level of public sociality in a subsequent period, in which there was an upsurge in public discussion on ‘civil society’.

RT2 is based at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. The Main Research Team consists of two faculty members of the same department, Professor Chrystos Lyrintzis as the Team Leader and Associate Professor Dimitris Sotiropoulos. The External Research Team includes Dr John Karagiannis, Katerina Loukidou, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Athens, and Katerina Rozakou, PhD, University of Aegean.

The specific case studies of RT2 are the following:

Christos Lyrintzis and Yiannis Karayiannis: “Aspects of social and political demand (1974-1981)”
Based on archival data from the daily press, this study examines selected cases of associations in order to systematically explore aspects of social and political demands that appeared during the first period after the collapse of the dictatorship regime (1974-1981). Apart from the repertoire of demands, special attention will be given to the assertive means and actions taken by these associations, and especially to the possible alliances they formed with other social groups. The discourse and the ideological schemata underpinning the arguments that these associations formulate in their attempts to achieve their goals will also be considered.

Dimitris A. Sotiropoulos and Katerina Loukidou: “Relationships between the Greek State and ‘civil society’ (1974-1981)”
This study is based on selected cases of associations in an attempt to explore the multidimensional relationships between the Greek State and ‘civil society’ in the period 1974-1981. It seeks to examine the ways in which the government, local authorities and politicians react to the growing demands of ‘civil society’. In addition, it will consider the relationships between political authorities and ‘civil society’ from an institutional perspective, the state’s legislative initiatives that set the framework of operation of ‘civil society’, and the extent to which this framework affected the forms of social organisation and public intervention of the different social groups.

Yiannis Karayiannis and Katerina Loukidou: “‘Civil society’ in the daily press, 1974-1981”
This case study explores how newspapers with different ideological and political orientations (Ta Nea, Rizospastis, Kathimerini and Makedonia) depict the Greek ‘civil society’. Specifically, it will examine why some associations are cited more frequently in the press than others and  enhance the interpretative schemata used to describe the activities of various social groups.

Katerina Rozakou, “Voluntary associations for relief to immigrants: an ethnographic approach to public sociality in early 21st-century Athens”
The study focuses on two voluntary associations currently offering relief to immigrants in Athens and which have different social and organisational characteristics, history and ideological origins. Adopting the ethnographic approach, the study examines the cultural terms of the production of public sociality, the meanings and political content of social relations, as well as the alternative meanings of ‘citizenship’. Furthermore, the study correlates the micro-level of sociality in the context of the associations with the discourses on ‘civil society’ that increase during this period.