Children of Marx, Coca Cola and the Greek colonels? Rethinking student resistance in the long 1960s

Eirini Karamouzi (The A. G. Leventis Fellow on Modern Greece, St Antony's College, Oxford)

On 22 January 2015, SEESOX hosted a seminar entitled ‘Children of Marx, Coca Cola and the Greek colonels? Rethinking student resistance in the long 1960s’ with speakers Kostis Kornetis (University of New York), Eirini Karamouzi (SEESOX) and chaired by Paul Betts (St Antony’s College). Kornetis presented the findings of his recently published book "Children of the Dictatorship: Student Resistance, Cultural Politics, and the 'Long 1960s' in Greece", which focuses on the political, social, and cultural history of youthful opposition to the Greek military dictatorship (1967-74). The culmination and the most spectacular of all resistance activities was the student occupation of the Athens Polytechnic in November 1973 - an occupation that lasted three days and came to a bloody conclusion as it was crushed by the regime’s tanks; at least twenty-four people were certified dead and another fifteen went “missing”. If the most emblematic moment in Western European recent protest culture remains 1968, the absolute vertex for later developments in Greece’s political activism were therefore the Polytechnic events of 1973 – paradoxically becoming later on a national “lieu de memoire”. The hegemonic role that this emblematic movement played and continues to play in Greece, renders its close study of paramount importance to understand both the events themselves and their afterlives. The book is innovative and original in the simple fact that is as not as much about the politics of protest, as about the cultural memory thereof, thus promoting a dialogue between private microhistory and public events. By exploring the subjective element in student discourse and action, it looks at the ways in which these identities have changed over time and how individuals look back at their past militancy almost forty years later. Kornetis explicitly underlined during his talk that the aim was not to look only at the facts, but to explore the psychological and symbolic dimension, the unconscious, the imaginary and the projections, the memory distortions and the memory losses of the actors in question.

Beyond Europeanisation: European hegemony versus global influences

Othon Anastasakis (Director of SEESOX; Senior Research Fellow, St Antony's College, Oxford)

On 21 January 2015, SEESOX introduced its Hilary term seminar series entitled “Global South East Europe in a multipolar world” focusing on the region’s engagement with the world beyond Europe, dealing with big regional powers such as Russia or China, and addressing urgent issues such as economic development, energy security, migration or diasporas. The first session was a panel debate which focused on the region beyond europeanisation and its engagement with other global and regional powers. The panel consisted of Othon Anastasakis (Oxford), Spyros Economides (LSE), James Ker-Lindsay (LSEE) and chaired by Kalypso Nicolaidis (SEESOX).

Critical juncture? Bulgaria after the Snap Poll

The Conference Organising Committee: Rumena Filipova, Ivo Gruev, Ivaylo Iadjiev, and Stanislava Topouzova

On Wednesday, December 3rd 2014, the South East European Studies at Oxford (SEESOX) programme at the European Studies Centre (ESC), University of Oxford, hosted the first annual Oxford – Bulgaria Conference. The Conference, 'Critical Juncture? Bulgaria after the Snap Poll: Change and Continuity in Politics, Foreign Policy, and the Economy After the 2014 Elections’, was held in the immediate aftermath of the Bulgarian parliamentary elections on October 5th, at a time when Bulgaria faced a period of deep reflection on future reforms in the country. The Conference facilitated three specialised panels in the fields of international relations, domestic politics, and energy and economy, and included discussions on core topics of concern, including: the challenge of devising a coherent foreign policy, the outcome of the parliamentary elections, the role of civil society movements in Bulgaria, and the salience of structural and legal reforms in the energy sector. Over the course of the day, researchers, practitioners, professors, and experts alike, assembled together to incisively examine the core issues presented in each panel.

Greece in the Euro: Economic delinquency or system failure?

Adam Bennett (SEESOX Associate; Academic Visitor, St Antony’s College, Oxford)

On November 26, Eleni Panagiotarea, research fellow of the Hellenic Foundation for European & Foreign Policy in Athens, returned to Oxford (for the first time since completing her PhD) to reflect on the predicament of Greece and the Euro at a SEESOX seminar in the European Studies Centre (ESC). Greece and the Euro, the Euro, and Greece – separately and together – have been recurring topics of debate at the ESC ever since the onset of the Eurozone crisis. The experience of Greece, at the bluntest end of this economic earthquake, encapsulates dramatically many of the dilemmas and stresses that have rocked the currency union. As Eleni made clear in her presentation, despite the declarations of victory from the ECB and ESM, this sorry saga is not yet over.

The seminar was held at an unusually timely juncture, with the IMF (as lead player of the troika) poised to undertake the sixth review of the Extended Fund Arrangement, amid calls from some quarters that conditions now permit an early end to this arrangement (currently scheduled to expire in March 2016), making this potentially the last review and the last dose of the hated conditionality. With the European funding component of the Troika’s package coming to an end anyway in December, and with Ireland and Portugal already out of the clutches of the IMF, there was an eagerness in Greece to graduate (to use an IMF term) from its program. But was Greece really ready to do this?

My Child: When parents of LGBTs in Turkey speak out

Funda Ustek (Post-doctoral Researcher, Department of Sociology, Goldsmiths, University of London)

On 28 November 2014, Can Candan’s multi-award winning documentary “My Child” featuring the parents of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) individuals in Turkey was screened at SEESOX with the participation of the director Can Candan, co-producer H. Metehan Ozkan and parent Sema Yakar. The documentary takes us through the journey of the parents of LGBT individuals as they are intimately sharing their experiences of what it means to be parents, family, activists in a conservative, blatantly homophobic and transphobic society. 

25 years of transition in Central and Eastern Europe and its impact on the economy

Jonathan Scheele (SEESOX Associate; Senior Member, St Antony's College, Oxford)

On 18 November, Rainer Muenz, Head of Research at Erste Bank, Vienna, gave a seminar, convened jointly by ESC and SEESOX, “On the doorstep between Brussels and Moscow”, looking at the economic prospects for the countries of Central and Eastern Europe – new Member States and candidates. He delivered a master class in clarity and concision, marshalling complex data sets to render his thinking easily accessible to all.

He began by remarking that there was snow on economic expectations – how should we interpret this? His conclusion was far from reassuring. The CEE countries could, pre-crisis, expect their growth differential against western Europe to allow their GDP to converge to the EU average within two to three generations; post-crisis, with a much lower growth differential on current trends, convergence to the EU average will take a lifetime.

The crisis in Greece and Southern Europe: A Whodunnit

David Madden (SEESOX Associate; Senior Member, St Antony's College, Oxford)

Professor Loukas Tsoukalis spoke on this subject at SEESOX on 14 November. He spoke mainly about Greece as a catalyst in the crisis: and also about Italy, Spain and Portugal (and Ireland as an honorary member of the Southern European group): less about Cyprus, where the main problem had been over-exposure of Cypriot banks to Greek government debt.

Although a whodunnit, there was not yet a happy ending in sight. The worst economic crisis since WW2 would continue to have profound effects, and shake integration projects. The series of matryoshka dolls got uglier: the bursting of the biggest international bubble since 1929, a systemic crisis of the Eurozone (a currency without a state), and national failures of unsustainable economic models and dysfunctional political systems.