Papers by Theodora Vetta
Working Paper for the ERC Grassroots Economics Project, 2014
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Working paper for the ERC Grassroots Economics Project, 2014
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Special Issues by Theodora Vetta
Anthropological Theory, Volume 16, Issue 4, Dec 2016
New special issue of Anthropological Theory, dedicated to Moral Economy. The chosen title, ‘Moral... more New special issue of Anthropological Theory, dedicated to Moral Economy. The chosen title, ‘Moral Economy in Crisis’, reflects two aspects of the discussion at stake. First, it highlights that it stems from research among social groups which have been impacted by the ongoing European crisis, in one way or another. Second, and most importantly, the title of this special issue conveys a collective desire to problematize the notion of moral economy and put its conceptual relevance to test. The special issue includes articles written by:
1. Jaime Palomera and Theodora Vetta, "Moral Economy: Rethinking a Radical Concept"
2. Dimitra Kofti, "Moral economy of flexible production: Fabricating precarity between the conveyor belt and the household"
3. Valerio Simoni, "Economization, moralization, and the changing moral economies of ‘capitalism’ and ‘communism’ among Cuban migrants in Spain"
4. Dimitrios Gkintidis, "European integration as a moral economy: Greek technocrats amidst capitalism-in-crisis"
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articles by Theodora Vetta
Capitalism Nature Socialism, 33:4, 75-94, 2022
The energy sector in Greece has been undergoing multiple processes of
diversification, privatizat... more The energy sector in Greece has been undergoing multiple processes of
diversification, privatization and neoliberal restructuring, following EU
imperatives for common energy market and metabolized by fast-track
policies of the indebted state. Based on long ethnographic fieldwork in the
main coal-mining region of Greece, this article discusses the energopolitics of
austerity linking the state-backed logics of accumulation to the lived
experience of energy producers and consumers. The expropriation of
surrounding-the-mine villages, the growing transformation of public/
communal/private land into photovoltaic parks and the very directions of
imagining the future fuel multiscalar social and moral struggles. These reveal
not only the horizontal integration of nature into capital valorization, though– albeit reduced – coal production and the spectacular investment to renewable energy ventures, but also the vertical processes of subsumption, enabled by financial engineering and rent-extraction. The model of energy transition rests on an uneven regime of ecological distribution that shapes but also exploits growing intra-class conflicts, propelled by the very contradictory nature of public power companies within each historical capitalist moment.
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Anthropological Theory, 2016
This article argues that the original thrust of the moral economy concept has been understated an... more This article argues that the original thrust of the moral economy concept has been understated and attempts to cast it in a new light by bringing class and capital back into the equation. First, it reviews the seminal works of Thompson and Scott, tracing the origins of the term. It deals with the common conflation of moral economy with Polanyi’s notion of embeddedness, differentiating the two concepts and scrutinizing the ways in which these perspectives have been criticized. Second, it dispels dichotomist conceptions separating economic practice from morality, or embedded configurations from disembedded ones. Against binary views of the market as a boundless realm penetrating previously untainted moral spheres, it posits that social reproduction is characterized by an entanglement of values, which can only be fully grasped by delineating the contours and characteristics of capital accumulation. Third, it contends that moral economy is a dynamic concept because it accounts for class...
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In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there is a general process of readjustment of socio-pol... more In the aftermath of the financial crisis, there is a general process of readjustment of socio-political relations, power geometries and hierarchies within fundamental segments of society. This article tackles precisely such transformations by analyzing emerging practices, legitimacies and struggles around citizenship in south European periphery. Ideologies, representations and deriving practices around models of financial support are deeply engrained within particular production structures, embedded themselves within particular historical social relations, moralities and claims. By looking at two very differently-almost opposed-produced regions, the Industrial District of SMEs in Veneto, and the large electricity production site of Kozani, we ethnographically explore the dialectics between the political meanings attached to "private" and "public", while inhabiting with our analysis the mutually constitutive relationships between the economic and the political.
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In Aramburu, M. and Bofill, S. (eds) Sentidos de Injusticia, Sentidos de Crisis: Tensiones conceptuales y aproximaciones etnográficas. Barcelona: Editorial Universitat de Barcelona (Col·lecció Estudis d’Antropologia social y cultural)., 2020
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Vetta, Theodora. 2020. “Bondage unemployment and intra-class tensions in Greek energy restructuring.” In Narotzky, S. (ed.) Grassroots Economies: Living with Austerity in Southern Europe. London: Pluto Press., 2020
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Focaal, 2009
Following the Belgrade riots after Kosovo's proclamation of independence in February 2008 and the... more Following the Belgrade riots after Kosovo's proclamation of independence in February 2008 and the rise of the nationalist Serbian Radical Party in elections since 2001, several analysts have portrayed Serbia as a highly divided and confused nation unable to choose between a European, urban, and cosmopolitan democrat identity and a patriarchal, peasant, and collectivists nationalist one. This article historicizes this widespread culture-talk by ethnographically grounding it in particular processes that constitute Serbia's trajectory toward free market economy and liberal democracy. The concept of class as an analytical tool appears accurate in trying to understand people's biographies and political choices. By deconstructing popular cultural stereotypes of Radikali, the article argues that nationalism provides a framework that resonates most with the material and symbolic needs of a wide range of population. In the absence of a strong institution-alized left, the political choices of " nationalism's supporters " are based more on rational choice than on identity quests and strategies of manipulation.
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Special Issue: "Moral Economy in Crisis" (Ed. by Theodora Vetta and Jaime Palomera), 2016
This article argues that the original thrust of the moral economy concept has been understated an... more This article argues that the original thrust of the moral economy concept has been understated and attempts to cast it in a new light by bringing class and capital back into the equation. First, it reviews the seminal works of Thompson and Scott, tracing the origins of the term. It deals with the common conflation of moral economy with Polanyi’s notion of embeddedness, differentiating the two concepts and scrutinizing the ways in which these perspectives have been criticized. Second, it dispels dichotomist conceptions separating economic practice from morality, or embedded configurations from disembedded ones. Against binary views of the market as a boundless realm penetrating previously untainted moral spheres, it posits that social reproduction is characterized by an entanglement of values, which can only be fully grasped by delineating the contours and characteristics of capital accumulation. Third, it contends that moral economy is a dynamic concept because it accounts for class-informed frameworks involving traditions, valuations and expectations. Finally, it argues that moral economy can enrich the concept of hegemony because it pays attention to the often-contradictory values that guide and sustain livelihood practices, through which cultural domination is reproduced or altered.
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Antipode, May 2020
This article seeks to tackle less researched areas of financialisation, namely class relations wi... more This article seeks to tackle less researched areas of financialisation, namely class relations within the sphere of production. We ethnographically explore the trajec-tories of two small construction family-firms in Greece and Spain, traditionally perceived as the backbone of the Mediterranean economy but also lying at the very heart of the last financial bubble. Looking at the boom and bust of such ventures, we argue that the penetration of credit in this particular production structure, built through subcontracting chains, has reproduced and intensified deep inequalities: privileged position regarding financing enabled profit to be channelled upwards whereas risk and exploitation was transferred downwards. At the same time, rent-making or rent-extraction practices have become pervasive not only in the circulation and consumption spheres but also inside production.
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Book chapters by Theodora Vetta
In In Tosic J. and Streinzer A. (eds) Deservingness - Genealogies, Struggles and Ideologies. New York -Oxford: Berghahn Books (EASA Series). , 2022
Since 2010, over-indepted households in Greece massively appeal to courts’ mediation for renegoti... more Since 2010, over-indepted households in Greece massively appeal to courts’ mediation for renegotiating their “red loans”. The Katseli Law introduced the possibility of individual bankrupcy and, under certain monetary criteria, promised the protection of homes against foreclosure. However, the legal dispute during the provisional trials revolved around questions of moral judgment: who “deserves” to be protected? On the one hand, by highlighting over-indebtedness as individual consumption choice, as sign of deceit or as economic victimhood demanding humanitarian compassion, both the expropriation aspect of financialization and the ever deeper inequalities at production sphere were left unaddressed. On the other hand, the performance of the state as a neutral mediator of conflict depoliticized indebtedness by dissociating the credit market from statecraft. Ultimately, the moral mapping of deservingness marked strong scapegoatization processes that, coupled with public debt’s socialization mechanisms, narrowed the possibility of solidary action and collective claim-making.
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Democracy at Large NGOs,IIn: Political Foundations, Think Tanks and International Organizations Editors: Petric, B. (Ed.), 2012
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Cultures of Doing Good: Anthropologists and NGOs, edited by Amanda Lashaw, Christian Vannier, and Steven Sampson, 2017
Since the mid-90s the concept of Civil Society appears more and more often as a global axiom in d... more Since the mid-90s the concept of Civil Society appears more and more often as a global axiom in development discourse and policies dealing with transition and reconciliation in post-communist and post-conflict countries. This chapter will offer some anthropological insights of a USAID-funded “Democracy promotion” program, implemented in Serbia from 2001 to 2007. The aid-intervention called “Community Revitalization through Democratic Action” was promising a rupture of what was thought to be a “communist culture of dependency” through the promotion of civic engagement at the grassroots level, i.e through creating and “empowering” dozens of local NGOs. First, I set to describe and understand the doings and outcomes of this project through analyzing the multilevel power relations built around it, the various meanings, strategies and conflicts wedded around the normative discourse of ‘participation’. Second, I argue that this civil-society program had very little to do with “bringing back the people” but was instead targeting the re-structuring and re-scaling of state structures, with very diverse outcomes
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Papers by Theodora Vetta
Special Issues by Theodora Vetta
1. Jaime Palomera and Theodora Vetta, "Moral Economy: Rethinking a Radical Concept"
2. Dimitra Kofti, "Moral economy of flexible production: Fabricating precarity between the conveyor belt and the household"
3. Valerio Simoni, "Economization, moralization, and the changing moral economies of ‘capitalism’ and ‘communism’ among Cuban migrants in Spain"
4. Dimitrios Gkintidis, "European integration as a moral economy: Greek technocrats amidst capitalism-in-crisis"
articles by Theodora Vetta
diversification, privatization and neoliberal restructuring, following EU
imperatives for common energy market and metabolized by fast-track
policies of the indebted state. Based on long ethnographic fieldwork in the
main coal-mining region of Greece, this article discusses the energopolitics of
austerity linking the state-backed logics of accumulation to the lived
experience of energy producers and consumers. The expropriation of
surrounding-the-mine villages, the growing transformation of public/
communal/private land into photovoltaic parks and the very directions of
imagining the future fuel multiscalar social and moral struggles. These reveal
not only the horizontal integration of nature into capital valorization, though– albeit reduced – coal production and the spectacular investment to renewable energy ventures, but also the vertical processes of subsumption, enabled by financial engineering and rent-extraction. The model of energy transition rests on an uneven regime of ecological distribution that shapes but also exploits growing intra-class conflicts, propelled by the very contradictory nature of public power companies within each historical capitalist moment.
Book chapters by Theodora Vetta
1. Jaime Palomera and Theodora Vetta, "Moral Economy: Rethinking a Radical Concept"
2. Dimitra Kofti, "Moral economy of flexible production: Fabricating precarity between the conveyor belt and the household"
3. Valerio Simoni, "Economization, moralization, and the changing moral economies of ‘capitalism’ and ‘communism’ among Cuban migrants in Spain"
4. Dimitrios Gkintidis, "European integration as a moral economy: Greek technocrats amidst capitalism-in-crisis"
diversification, privatization and neoliberal restructuring, following EU
imperatives for common energy market and metabolized by fast-track
policies of the indebted state. Based on long ethnographic fieldwork in the
main coal-mining region of Greece, this article discusses the energopolitics of
austerity linking the state-backed logics of accumulation to the lived
experience of energy producers and consumers. The expropriation of
surrounding-the-mine villages, the growing transformation of public/
communal/private land into photovoltaic parks and the very directions of
imagining the future fuel multiscalar social and moral struggles. These reveal
not only the horizontal integration of nature into capital valorization, though– albeit reduced – coal production and the spectacular investment to renewable energy ventures, but also the vertical processes of subsumption, enabled by financial engineering and rent-extraction. The model of energy transition rests on an uneven regime of ecological distribution that shapes but also exploits growing intra-class conflicts, propelled by the very contradictory nature of public power companies within each historical capitalist moment.