Spatial legacies of December and the right to the city

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[Introduction to] Revolt and crisis in Greece: between a present yet to pass and a future still to come

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How close before you burn? Questions of ethics and distance in researching crisis and unrest

Researchers examining urban riots or unrest constantly face questions about the motivations behind and impact of their work. These questions verge on the existential, because questioning a research topic essentially interrogates researchers’ role and existence as social scientists. With reference to two project examples from Athens, Greece, the author attempts to show how he has so far tried to grapple with such questions. Researching closely and drawing conclusions from distance: this has been a personal model of adjustable distance to the author’s research subjects, a strategy that seem to have somehow worked for the time being, writes Antonis Vradis

Complexation of Lysozyme with Adsorbed PtBS-b-SCPI Block Polyelectrolyte Micelles on Silver Surface

We present a study of the interaction of the positively charged model protein lysozyme with the negatively charged amphiphilic diblock polyelectrolyte micelles of poly(tert-butylstyrene)-bsodium (sulfamate/carboxylate)isoprene) (PtBS-b-SCPI) on the surface of silver. The adsorption kinetics are monitored by surface plasmon resonance and the surface morphology by atomic force microscopy. The micellar adsorption kinetics is dictated by two processes and the micellar layer morphology shows that the micelles do not lose their integrity upon adsorption. The complexation of lysozyme with the adsorbed micellar layers depends on the micelles arrangement and density in the underlying layer and lysozyme follows the local morphology of the underlying roughness. When the micellar adsorbed amount is small, the layers show low capacity in protein binding and low resistance in loading. When the micellar adsorbed amount is high the situation is inversed. The adsorbed layers both with or without added protein are found to be irreversibly adsorbed on the Ag surface

The production of information space in the port of Piraeus : digital logistical media, power mutations and state transformations

Funding: This research was supported by the RSE Saltire Early Career Fellowship awarded to Andreas between January 2022 and November 2022; and a St Leonard's Postgraduate College and School of Geography and Sustainable Development PhD Scholarship awarded to Andreas as part of his PhD.Since 2010 the container terminal of Piraeus has—under the management of the Chinese operator COSCO Shipping—established itself as a hub in the global supply chains as well as a critical node in China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The sharp increase in container handling volumes, and the terminal’s further interconnection with dozens more ports, have helped turn Piraeus into a global infrastructure. The article commences from an understanding of the port as an anomalous space where heterogeneous and overlapping powers, jurisdictions, actors and interests articulate and at times clash. It then turns to the port’s ongoing digitalisation and introduces the concept of ‘information space’ to explain the ways that information reflects and reproblematises the governance of Piraeus. More specifically, it focuses on the launch of a digital platform for the exchange of information between port users and the coordination of its operations. By interrogating the frictions and turbulent negotiations that followed the platform’s introduction, the paper explores the political, economic, and geographical transformations associated with the emergence of information as a key spatial agent.Peer reviewe

Lefebvre, Henri

Lefebvre, Henr

Food (in)security in urban peripheries : the case of Maré, Rio de Janeiro

This article discusses urban food insecurity and the right to the city in the case of Brazil overall, and in the Maré complex of favelas in Rio de Janeiro in particular. It presents the key questions that guided our research project, Nutricities, as these stemmed from our four working groups on urban agriculture; agroecological markets and food distribution; the genealogies of pacification; and food sovereignty in the favela. In addition, the article presents the action-research approach deployed by our team for the study of food insecurity. This study was situated in the context of the increasing securitisation of Brazilian urban peripheries, and the ensuing obstacles caused to their populations’ right to the city—by which we mean their claim to fundamental urban rights, which include access to affordable and good-quality food. The article proposes the agroecological approach as a potential avenue to reach popular food sovereignty in the areas where this prospect seems most distant at present: the urban peripheries of the Global South.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Towards a theory of gentrination: global capital flows and the reshaping of the global semi-periphery. The cases of Greece and Brazil

This book pays homage to Neil Smith’s ideas, offering a critical approach and rich collection of insights that draw on Smith’s work for inspiration and debate. With interdisciplinary and international contributions from leading experts, the book demonstrates the impact of Smith’s ideas on understanding the role of urbanization in general and gentrification, in particulate, in contemporary society. The book demonstrates how gentrification varies significantly from city to city, across different cultural and political-economic regimes, and in terms of the timing of urban transformations. This collection provides a forum for debate for those working in urban regeneration and citizenship, and those directly affected by the processes and problems arising from gentrification. It will be of interest students and scholars in urban geography, urban sociology, cultural studies, and wider social and urban theories

HNBR and its MWCNT reinforced nanocomposites : Crystalline morphology and electrical response

Morphology and electrical response of hydrogenated acrylonitrile butadiene rubber (HNBR) and its multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) reinforced nanocomposites were studied by means of x-ray diffraction and broadband dielectric spectroscopy. HNBR systems were found to be semi-crystalline, with their crystallinity to increase with the addition of MWCNTs. In their dielectric spectra, four relaxation processes were detected. Ascending in relaxation time, these were attributed to: (i) interfacial polarization at the interface of crystalline and amorphous regions of HNBR and at the interface between HNBR and MWCNTs, (ii) glass to rubber transition of the amorphous part of HNBR, (iii) rearrangement of polar side groups, such as –CN, and (iv) local motions of small segments of the main elastomer chain. Electrical conductivity increases with MWCNT content and frequency increasing. The effect of temperature, on the electrical response, is more pronounced at low frequencies. The temperature dependence of the electrical conductivity strongly deviates from a pure Arrhenius behavior, signifying that the occurring conductance mechanisms do not correspond to a single thermally activated process. Relaxation dynamics imply that crystalline regions exert motion restrictions to large segments of the macromolecules in the amorphous phase and to polar parts of the systems

Patterns of contentious politics concentration as a 'spatial contract'; a spatio-temporal study of urban riots and violent protest in the neighbourhood of Exarcheia, Athens, Greece (1974-2011)

Existing studies of urban riots, violent protest and other instances of contentious politics in urban settings have largely tended to be either event- or time-specific in their scope. The present thesis offers a spatial reading of such politics of contention in the city of Athens, Greece. Tracing the pattern of the occurrence of these instances through time, the research scope of the thesis spans across Greece’s post-dictatorial era (i.e. post-1974, the Greek Metapolitefsi), concluding shortly after the first loan agreement between the country’s national government and the so-called ‘troika’ of lenders (IMF/ECB/EU). The thesis includes a critical overview of literature on riots in a historical and geographical context; questions on methodology and ethics in researching urban riots; a discourse analysis of violence concentration in Exarcheia; ethnographic accounts on everyday life in the neighbourhood and a ‘rhythmanalysis’ of the Exarcheia contention concentration during the period of research. Seeking to explain this concentration the thesis introduces the notion of the 'spatial contract': rather than signalling a type of discord, the concentration of mass violence in Exarcheia through time is hereby conceived as the spatial articulation of a certain form of consensus between Greek authorities and their subjects. In this way, the thesis places the concentration of urban violence in Exarcheia solidly within the social and political context of the country’s postdictatorial era. The thesis suggests that it would be beneficial for future human geographical research to trace such concentration patterns of urban riots. By exercising a crossscale reading, it would then possible to place these and other forms of contentious politics within a social equilibrium that is far more complex and often much more consensual than it might appear to be