From Tactical Differentiation to Tactical Convergence. Trajectories of Healthcare Direct Social Actions and Their Impact in the Greek Healthcare Arena: 1983–2015

From Firenze University Press Journal: SocietàMutamentoPolitica

Stella Christou, Scuola Normale Superiore

On June 2015, the European Parliament (EP) honoured 47 people across the European Union with the European Citizen’s award. Among them were two people from Greece, Dr. Giorgos Vichas from the “Metropolitan Com-munity Clinic of Hellenikon” and Kostas Polichronopoulos from the soup kitchen “The other human”, both selected for their exemplary social contri-bution in the country.

During the award ceremony, the EP vice-president and Citizens’ Prize jury president Sylvie Guillaume highlighted that

The European Citizen’s Prize 2015 jury has honoured the efforts of citizens to provide healthcare for the poorest, food aid, rescue, solidarity, education, the fight against radi-calisation and the protection of LGBTI rights […] European citizens whose daily work is essential to the social cohesion of our countries and I am glad that the Parliament could honour them (European Parliament 2015).

However, neither of the two accepted the prize. Instead, they used the occasion to exert criticism towards Europe and its institutions. In the words of Dr. Vichas;

the austerity policies implemented and imposed in Greece are the result of pressure and blackmails by the IMF, the ECB and the EU. These policies have led more than 3 million impoverished and jobless citizens outside the health care system. […] This Europe, which wants to reward us, does not seem to be bothered by all these data, neither by the thousands of deaths of unsecured fellow citizens. […] It would be hypocritical for us to receive a Prize when Europe closes its eyes to malnourished infants and dead cancer patients, to mothers telling they have to live their families without electricity and water and minimal amount of food (Keep Talking Greece 2015).

Dr. Vichas’ refusal was a collective decision, taken on the side of the broader Social Clinics-Pharmacies movement that emerged in Greece over the course of the most recent cycle of anti-austerity contention in 2010. The movement was a massive instance of self-organisa-tion and a remarkable social action that provided (pri-mary) healthcare services and/ or pharmaceuticals for free to anyone in need. In the context of the crisis, over 90 such clinics-pharmacies sprang up across the country (Adam and Teloni 2015; Cabot 2016; Evlampidou and Kogevinas 2019). The majority of them formed the Social Clinics-Pharmacies movement, and shared common tactics, goals and principles. More specifically, the clinics-phar-macies combined direct tactics of healthcare and/or pharmaceutical provision with indirect protest tactics against the austerity regime. The movement demanded that the clinics-pharmacies become obsolete through progressive healthcare reform and public investment in the National Healthcare System (NHS). In this paper I provide a genealogy of those tac-tics of healthcare and/or pharmaceutical provision in Greece, to unearth their origins, continuities, discon-tinuities and strategic appropriation by different actors over time. I argue that although initially conceived by marginal actors and used as a strategy for differentia-tion and distancing from the hegemonic and predomi-nant actors in the Greek healthcare arena, these tactics became diffused and modular over the course of the anti-austerity contentious cycle. I investigate these shifts as an instance of repertoire innovation which can be explained on the basis of 1) the increased demand for healthcare services during the crisis years, 2) the politi-cisation of the healthcare arena, and 3) the introduction of new and emergent actors therein. Building on social movement scholarship, this paper opts to bring insights onto this largely overlooked set of tactics by providing a longitudinal perspective to their employment. In addition, it opts to complement exist-ing accounts of these tactics through a specific and clear focus on those tactics of healthcare (and pharmaceuti-cal) provision by contentious actors. As I hope to show, the healthcare arena exhibits some idiosyncrasies and is markedly distinct to the one of welfare. Studying contentious action therein, thus, can shed some light as to the particular dynamics of the arena as an arena of political contestation.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/smp-15500

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