Stretching Money to Pay the Bills

Temporal Modalities and Relational Practices of ‘Getting By’ in the Greek Economic Crisis

in The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
Author:
Andreas Streinzer University of Vienna andreas@cooperate.eu

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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3167/ca.2016.340106
Keywords:
crisis; debt; economic anthropology; Greece; social practices; time tricking
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This article investigates the temporalities of ‘getting by’ amidst the ripple effects of economic deterioration in Volos, Greece. Through the case of Kalypso and her family, I argue for a relational framework in the study of temporal practices, and then discuss the significant material relations of the family. Faced with less than half of their previous income, Kalypso runs a general budget pool via e-banking that allows her to coordinate the temporal constraints of periodic and everyday bills. The effect is a drifting apart of temporal experiences in the family as well as tensions about the future. Temporal agency is shown to reside in the modalities of social relations and in corresponding practices.

Contributor Notes

Andreas Streinzer is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at the University of Vienna, Fellow of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (DOC team) and Visiting Researcher at the Social Anthropology Laboratory, University of Thessaly. His ethnographic fieldwork has included investigations into economic relations and practices in Ethiopia, Austria and Greece.

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Cover The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
Article Category:
Research Article
Page Count:
13
Keywords:
crisis; debt; economic anthropology; Greece; social practices; time tricking
Print Publication Date:
01 Mar 2016
Online Publication Date:
01 Mar 2016
Copyright:
© The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology 2016
Editorial
General Article
Special Section - Time-Tricking: Reconsidering Temporal Agency in Troubled Times
Part I. Time-Tricking in Moments of Crisis: Political and Economic Manipulations of Time
Part II. Maintaining Other Times: Technologies for Being Out-of-Time
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