Greek Postwar Plastics Consumption as a Female Cultural Phenomenon

Abstract

This research is historical in nature and concerns the capitalist expansion of the West in post-war Greece using as ‘Trojan Horse’ the plastic products that flooded the domestic market and were associated with new technologies, typologies and a brand-new way of living. The mass import of synthetics, synonymous with postwar American and European abundance and prosperity, is connected with the almost total overthrow of the strictly traditional social institutions, habits and customs of the Greeks, as well as with the emergence of a new model of cultural consumption based on female purchasing power which was at the same time associated with the female emancipation and independence, especially in the 1960s. The series of subversive developments that sealed, mostly anonymously, the formation of taste, class culture, but also triggered the birth of the domestic plastics industry, unfolds methodically and it is also connected to the political aspect of the ‘western cultural invasion’. Through this research we will be able to identify the introduction of plastic products into the Greek market, society and culture with the aim of prevailing in an aesthetic, practical and symbolic way. This research will also shed light on a totally neglected field of modern Greek cultural and material history connected with the synthetic materials transforming power as regards the female emancipation through consumption.