87
Moreover, despite nearly 35 years of debate and civil action, the conditions of life,
particularly among the lower and middle classes, remained broadly unsatisfactory and
prospects for a positive future remained questionable: the state seemed unable or
unwilling to effect changes desired by the citizenry. As the formal publics of the state
came to be seen as increasingly ineffective and isolated from civil publics, cynicism
towards political parties, politicians, and the political process spread and deepened (see
Kafetzis 1994; 1997).85 Consequently, the public sphere underwent a subtle
transformation.
In a critical reflexive turn, civil publics began to attend more closely to suprastate
and sub-state forces of various kinds that were perceived to have normative primacy over
the domestic forces of governance and that were relevant to grassroots domestic issues.
For example, as Greece entered the Eurozone between 2000 and 2003, individuals
discussing the economy informally around kitchen tables and at cafés broadly dismissed
the state as having lost control over commodity pricing, even as the media indicated
otherwise86. In my interviews, most people described looking to various international
political-economic trajectories in considering whether their wages would increase, the
price of groceries would go up, or, for instance, whether the rates of private bank loans
would drop. This critical reflexivity brought about a transformation in local discourses of
risk and change whereby the rhetoric of unmitigated exposure which underlay the various
8, This phenomenon has also been noted in the Netherlands (referred to locally as the “gap” between voters
and political representative) and in Germany where it is referred to by the term politikverdrossenheit (see
Igwe 2004:332).
86 According to Alexis Papahelas, the managing editor of 1 Kathimerini newspaper, Greeks suffer from a
lack of public discourse where economic, social, and other issues might be debated (Papahelas 2009). This
was certainly the case in the early 2000s, a period when the media was very interested in government
strategies, interventions, and failures concerning the economy opting to gloss over the concerns and
perspectives of ordinary citizens.