Changing Patterns of Uneven Regional Development and Forms of Social Reproduction in Greece

Abstract

The period 1970–73 was a turning point after which certain intermediate regions and cities in Greece stopped declining and began to develop new productive activities. After 1974, the slowdown of economic growth rates coincided with the increasing economic, social, and political dynamism of these intermediate areas. These phenomena are poorly explained by many liberal and Marxist regional development approaches. Their almost exclusive attention to industrial production, to capital–labour movements or to the ‘basic’ formal, full-time, skilled, male industrial employment in an area, reproduces a production determinism which seems inadequate for the present period of crisis and deep restructuring. These approaches neglect certain key features of modern Greek capitalism such as the widespread pattern of multiple employment, the growing role of informal activities, the new function of the household in relation to outworking, and the gender dimension. It is hypothesised that these features reproduce a new mode of social reproduction in Greece which is illustrated in three short case studies: in Mesolóngion–Agrinion area in west–central Greece, in Kastoria in northwest Macedonia, and in Náxos in the Cyclades Islands.