Abstract
Spyridakis studies the often devastating effects of the movement of industrial capital, which results in the empowerment of specific places and groups at the expense of others. He draws on long-term ethnographic research on the slow decline of the shipbuilding industry in urban Perama, in Piraeus, Greece, since the 1990s to examine the impact of the movement of the international shipping capital on local people’s daily lives, in both material and cultural terms. Spyridakis shows how in attempting to cope with the destruction caused by remote processes of decision-making, local people follow ethical and rational codes of practice, taking into account contextual limitations and opportunities. Although capital might seem to have absolute power over the use of space, he suggests, there is a complex articulation of forces, projects and actors operating at different levels that should be considered when dealing with global urbanism and urban dynamics.
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Notes
- 1.
OECD members are those countries that have signed the Convention on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.
- 2.
For instance, until 1974 Sweden was the greatest power in the building of big oil tankers, but in 1985 it made the decision to stop subsidising its shipbuilding industry and to invest in the more economically safe car industry. At the same time, France reduced up to 80 per cent of their shipyard workforce whilst Germany reduced 40 per cent of the irs (Akritopoulos 1996).
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Spyridakis, M. (2018). Shipbuilding Decline and Dubious Futures: A Greek Ethnography of Creative Destruction. In: Pardo, I., Prato, G. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Urban Ethnography. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64289-5_10
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