Processes of creation and commodification of local collective symbolic capital; a tale of gentrification from Athens

Abstract

The paper makes an attempt to analyze the processes of creation and commodification of local collective symbolic capital in a previously-much-deprived neighborhood (Kerameikos-Metaxourgeio) in the Athens' city center in Greece. In doing so, the paper builds on David Harvey's theoretical analysis on the ways that monopoly rent is generated, by the capitalists, upon the uniqueness of culture, or in other words, upon the collective symbolic capital that marks a city, a place, or a neighborhood. In order to highlight the processes of generation and commodification of collective symbolic capital, the paper uses a typology, as developed by Cohendet, Grandadam, and Simon (2010, 2011, 2014) that demarcates the processes of creativity, and in our case the processes of collective symbolic value creation, into three layers: that of the underground (artists), the middleground (places, events) and the upperground (firms). The relational interaction of these three layers, produces creative externalities that are gradually deposited in the middleground that gives birth to the local collective symbolic capital of an area. This then can be a subject of commodification by the relational elements of the underground and upperground, but in very unequal ways. Moreover, the paper shows that the element of middleground can be regarded as the spatial terrain for struggles and antagonisms between artists of the underground and firms that attempt to create and appropriate the symbolic capital by invading into the middleground. Furthermore, the conceptual and analytical tool that the paper builds, offers a fresh way at exploring further the processes of urban gentrification.