Lawsuit (& complaint to the Eur. Commission) against the Ministry of Education for the programme "Herakleitos II"

On Thursday, October 6th 2011, I filed a lawsuit in front of the Athens Administrative Court against the Ministry of Education regarding part of the funding approved for my research project "Exchange networks and parallel currencies: Theoretical approaches and the case of Greece", asking for the amount they refuse to pay for the time period since 1-6-2009 until August 2010, i.e. almost half of the scholarship from the funding programme titled “Heracleitos II - Enhancing human research personnel through performance of PhD research”.

The story is as follows: in March 2009 I submitted a proposal...

Volos TEM currency, Ovolos currency and Peliti network on New York Times!

You may read the article here
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/02/world/europe/in-greece-barter-networks-surge.html?_r=1

or click on the link at the left column of the blog.

...And an interview of Prof. Takis Nikolopoulos

... on Solidarity Economy (in Greek)

http://reviews.in.gr/diafora/socialeconomy/article/?aid=1231127639

You may also click on the same link on the left column of the blog!

As i am waiting for the questionnaires' results...

...in the meantime, one may read Faidra Papavasiliou's PhD dissertation on the currency of Ithaca Hours. Faidra did heavy fieldwork in Ithaca and the results of her research are not just interesting, they are challenging!

You may download the entire dissertation at
https://etd.library.emory.edu/view/record/pid/emory:15tdh
or by clicking at the link on the left column of the blog.

Prepublication... to make clear what we are talking about

There follows the abstract and small parts of the working paper which will be presented at the 88th Conference «Hellenic Language and Terminology» which will be held in Athens, 10-12 November 2011 (See http://www.eleto.gr/gr/Conference08.htm). The final volume of the conference communications will be published after the conference - the working paper is in English now, but it will be published in Greek too, after the conference. In this prepublication there are missing the footnotes!

Economic activity in Greece without official currency:
The terms and their economies

Irene Sotiropoulou

ABSTRACT
This paper belongs to an ongoing PhD research project, titled “Exchange Networks and Parallel Currencies: Theoretical approaches and the case of Greece”, which is already in its third-year phase. The project comprises both theoretical study and field research and it focuses on economic activity in Greece which is performed without the use of any official currency. The research faces severe terminology problems, which may be categorised, for analytical purposes only, in:
a) the terms used to describe the activity itself in one language.
b) the terms used in Greek to describe this activity in comparison to the terms used in other languages for same or quite similar activities.
c) the academic terminology on international level concerning all this economic activity and the major problem that this terminology refers to currencies only but not to the rest of the activity.

The * hypothesis

Is it possible to have a research hypothesis without a name? Well, it might not be possible, but it might be necessary...

The latest paper is available online under the title

ECONOMIC ACTIVITY WITHOUT OFFICIAL CURRENCY IN GREECE: THE * HYPOTHESIS

at this link

http://www.iippe.org/wiki/images/2/22/CONF_2011_Irene_Sotiropoulou.pdf

(copy the link to your browser or click on the link at the left column of the blog)

ABSTRACT
Historical study has not been within the scope of the research project titled “Exchange networks and parallel currencies: Theoretical approaches and the case of Greece”. Of course, research participants often mention that their economic activity is not a new invention. However, it did not arrive to be imminent to consider of locating this activity within a historical framework till mapping of the schemes took place. The geographical dispersion of the schemes was such, that neither new communication technologies, nor the current economic crisis in Greece could explain the phenomenon in a satisfactory way.

Moreover, several research findings repeatedly appear without enabling any theoretical explanation that could link them together. At the same time, modern literature from all over the world is being oriented towards the study of parallel currencies, while exchange networks and free bazaars are almost inexistent for both academic and non-academic writers. Of course, it would not be wise to think that exchange networks and free bazaars are just a Greek originality. What is happening then?

The present paper is an attempt to formulate a hypothesis using research findings which for reasons we cannot explain yet, “demand” their place in time, actually in time and space altogether. We try to see how scheme members with both their discourse and action challenge our perceptions about:

a) transactions without official currency being an old-times trait, which has long been or should be abandoned as “non-economic” and inefficient.

The report by Amélie Poinssot of the AFP

on non-monetary initiatives in Greece has been published twice:

a) Through a video on youtube

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7J0BghKMcvQ

b) By her report at Radio France Internationale (RFI)

http://www.rfi.fr/emission/20110411-1-accents-europe-2011-04-11

(the report about Greece starts at 8:28, you click on the "Ecouter" button)

(You copy the links on your browser or you click on the links at the left column of this blog)