The name is absent

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exchange for the teachers’ freedom: a micro-scale revolt against authority. Such an act
would not have been possible had the students not felt an affinity towards an anti-
establishment ideology, or if students did not feel a sense of unity with peers, both within
their social circles and beyond them, that enabled this kind of broad political solidarity.
The paréa has thus become a site of non-political, civil or proto-civil social potentiality.
Consider another example: adolescents and younger university-age people have taken to
occupying abandoned houses on the weekends where they hold parties, screen movies,
organize environmental action, and, more recently, pursue “DIY”¹⁰⁹ living by planting
vegetable gardens, generating their own power, and reusing discarded furniture and
appliances from the neighborhood¹¹⁰ (see figure 4).

Figure 4: An occupied home in Halandri, Athens.

¹⁰⁹ This is a popular acronym for “do it yourself’: a trend that has become popular among environmentally
conscious individuals (see for example Purdue et al. 1997) and generally those looking to save money, fight
consumerism, and global corporate influence (see for example Strachan 2007).

‘¹⁰ For more on these kinds of urban “squats” see Ruggiero (2001).

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