The Liminal Worker: An Ethnography of Work, Unemployment and Precariousness in Contemporary Greece

摘要

Since 2009, the Greek economic crisis has featured prominently in international and European news, while Greece witnessed the rise of extremism, protests and a major restructuring of its political system (see Zartaloudis 2013). It is no surprise that in this context, Spyridakis' book offers a timely analysis of how precariousness is understood by Greek workers and unemployed people. The book is an ethnographic study of three cases: (1) tobacco workers who became redundant, (2) shipbuilding workers and (3) bank employees. All three case studies are connected under the theme of 'liminality' whereby the author shows how his subjects experience and adapt to the unfavourable economic and working conditions in Greece. The case studies cover relatively different time-frames and are based on different methodologies. The first case of redundant tobacco workers entails ethnographic interviews with 22 former tobacco workers during 2011; the second case of shipbuilding workers relies on 11 years of participant observation which was completed in 2009; the third case of bank employees draws on interviews with 16 bank employees during 2009.