Abstract
ABSTRACT As economic crisis deepens across Europe people are forced to find innovative strategies to accommodate circumstances of chronic uncertainty. Even with a second multi-billion euro bailout package secured for Greece, the prospects of a sustainable recovery in the near future look bleak. However, crisis has also created dynamic spaces for entrepreneurial opportunism and diversification resulting in social mobility, relocation, shifts in livelihood strategy and a burgeoning informal economy. Although economic systems are currently undergoing radical reassessment, social demands such as competitive consumption remain. Opportunities for investment in renewable energy programmes, especially photovoltaics, are also pervasive. By considering cases of business opportunism and livelihood diversification in relation to Max Weber's concept of wertrational and notions of uncertainty, this article brings new perspectives to strategies of negotiating the worst economic crisis in living memory.
Highlights
Dynamic spaces for opportunism and diversification can be fashioned in periods of crisis as existing social demands endure amidst a rapidly shifting economic environment
As Greece enters a fifth year of economic uncertainty signified by spiralling unemployment, pension cuts and tax increases as part of Troika1 austerity packages, people draw on legacies of previous critical events to comprehend contemporary crisis experience (Knight 2012a; 2012b; 2013c)
Despite prominent narratives of turmoil and destitution, crisis fashions spaces for opportunities and diversification through business innovation and enforced changes to livelihood strategy
Summary
M. (2015) 'Opportunism and diversication : entrepreneurship and livelihood strategies in uncertain times.', Ethnos : journal of anthropology., 80 (1). The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted
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