94
interests and concerns of citizens and as the civil action they undertake fail to achieve
sustained benefits93.
Social action potential is thus moving from formal organizations to informal
activist groups engaging in various socio-political activities in pursuit of locally relevant
ends. In this relocation the kinds of civil action individuals may engage in are also being
redefined by a combination of emerging group dynamics and, increasingly, by the
translocally informed publics at the heart of these initiatives. As this trend intensifies,
Greece is seeing a growing popular politics based on an ethics informed by critical civic
sensibility increasingly decoupled from formal discourses. In this turn, space has opened
within the political landscape for deeply democratic social action, but also for the
proliferation of radical factions. As the following will demonstrate, these radical factions
are coming to influence certain groups attentive to publics compatible with their socio-
political goals. Among certain groups, this is contributing to an increasingly
ideologically-based animosity towards the state, rather than frustration or disillusionment
based primarily on experience, and is moreover bringing the tactics of globally connected
insurgent groups within the purview of domestic politics.
The Rise of an Anti-Establishment Youth: Exploring the Parea
By 2000 it was increasingly plain that the government had failed the youth of
Greece: drug and alcohol use among this population was increasing (Kokkevi et al. 2000;
93 The classic academic rendition of a strong civil society posits its independence from major institutional
spheres, organizations, and markets, ensuring freedom to act in an uninhibited manner between the citizen
and the state according to a logic of civic solidarity (Cohen & Arato 1992; Lockwood 1964; Tester 1992).
The close involvement of the state in civil society suggests that this is not the case in Greece; however, this
work argues that civil society in fact does exist, but one must examine the political field on a different scale
to find it.