“Solidarity” and solidarity. Language, activism and social reproduction in the greek crisis

This paper is the first synthesis of ongoing research on three grassroots free health centers for the uninsured in Athens, Greece. It poses two main questions: how and why do individuals mobilize and become health care activists? How do they communicate their choice? This paper claims that health care activism in the observed sites is an exclusionary strategy of social reproduction of the impoverished middle-class and that it takes place, also, through language. Social reproduction is related to four factors: different levels of impact of the crisis among classes; unequal distribution of social, cultural and economic capital; the incorporation of biomedicine and its power structures; and the moral economy of “solidarity”. This paper sketches a genealogy of “solidarity” and uses both ethnography and analytical philosophy to trace its use among activists.