Against the backdrop of austerity and COVID-19, the Social and Solidarity Economy (SSE) sector is viewed as central by policy-makers to address the precarizing impacts of these crises on society. On the one hand, scholars have illuminated the ways in which the SSE can alleviate state and market failures. On the other hand, radical scholarship has pointed to the ways in which SSE actors can transform the means of production and distribution altogether. Less attention has been paid to the epistemic consequences of fusing market-derived principles with conceptions of ‘the social’ and ‘solidarity' in the SSE. In this seminar, Dimitris Soudias presented key findings to this regard, by delineating the ‘making of’ the Social and Solidarity Economy in Greece under SYRIZA.  

Meet our speakers and chair

Dimitris Soudias is HBA Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the London School of Economics. In his doctoral dissertation, he investigated the formation of political subjectivity against the backdrop of crisis and austerity in Greece. Dimitris' recent publications include Subjects in crisis: Paradoxes of emancipation and alter-neoliberal critique (The Sociological Review) and Imagining the Commoning Library: Alter-Neoliberal Pedagogy in Informational Capitalism (Journal of Digital Social Research).

Vassilis Monastiriotis is Associate Professor of Political Economy at the European Institute (LSE). He is Director of the LSE Research Unit on Southeast Europe.

The twitter Hashtag for this event is: #LSEGreece

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The Hellenic Observatory (@HO_LSE) is internationally recognised as one of the premier research centres on contemporary Greece and Cyprus. It engages in a range of activities, including developing and supporting academic and policy-related research; organisation of conferences, seminars and workshops; academic exchange through visiting fellowships and internships; as well as teaching at the graduate level through LSE's European Institute.