World Development 157 (2022) 105957 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect World Development journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/worlddev Southern thought, islandness and real-existing degrowth in the Mediterranean Giorgos Kallis a,b,⇑, Angelos Varvarousis a,d, Panos Petridis c a Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain b ICREA, Barcelona, Spain c Institute of Social Ecology (SEC), University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences (BOKU), Vienna, Austria d Hellenic Open University (HOU), Greece a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Article history: In thinking about alternatives to growth-based development, we draw attention to Mediterranean islands Accepted 5 May 2022 and the way they animate imaginaries and practices of a simple life. We follow Franco Cassano’s thesis of Available online 19 May 2022 ‘Southern thought’ – a critique of Western developmentalism, prioritizing instead values of slowness, moderation and conviviality. These values are central to what Serge Latouche and others call ‘degrowth’. Keywords: Drawing on fieldwork and ethnography from Ikaria and Gavdos, two remote islands in the Greek archi- Southern thought pelago, we show how Southern thought, and forms of real-existing degrowth develop in relation to ‘is- Degrowth landness’ – a physical and cultural condition specific to small islands. Geography, historical Post-development Frugal abundance contingency, and processes of myth-making combine to re-valorise what otherwise would be seen as ‘un- Alternative economic practices developed’ places, thereby generating space for real-existing degrowth. Islands Ó 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND Islandness license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). 1. Introduction and, as a result, offer lessons about what we call here ‘real- existing degrowth’. In this paper, we focus on two such cases – The monolithic Western model of linear progress and continu- two remote islands in the Greek archipelago and use them to think ous economic growth, has colonised other worldviews with about degrowth, and the conditions under which it might be pro- accompanying ecological and social ramifications (Escobar, 2011). duced and sustained. We reap lessons from island studies con- Continued economic growth in high-income nations is socially tributing to the wider field of world development by exploring and ecologically destructive (Alexander, 2012). New research agen- ways of improving standards of living by questioning the growth das investigate the prospects of prosperity without growth imperative and featuring other ways of enhancing human well- (Jackson, 2009), of degrowth (Kallis et al., 2018), and of post- being. development (Escobar, 2015, Klein & Morreo, 2019), revaluing Mediterranean islands have animated imaginaries of a simple, and seeking to make visible alternatives already existing in parts yet fulfilled life, embodying a set of alternative values and modes of the world (Acosta, 2013; Kothari et al., 2014, 2019). of existence likened to degrowth. In this paper we focus on two Empirical studies of degrowth focus mostly on communities such remote islands in Greece, Ikaria and Gavdos, which are incu- resisting against growth-based development or experiences of bating, partly through accident, partly intentionally as we will adaptation to the lack of growth (Demaria et al., 2019; Escobar, show, alternative cultures that speak to broader debates about 2015). A recent collection of cases from ‘postdevelopment in prac- degrowth. We entertain the idea here that there is a seed in tice’ considers alternative territorialized experiences that chal- Mediterranean societies of alternative cultures – largely akin to lenge dominant models of development (Klein & Morreo, 2019). ‘degrowth’ (Romano, 2012). This seed, called ‘Southern thought’, is Less attention has been given to theorizing territories which, a cultural imaginary centred around values of slowness, modera- through a mix of geographic, cultural or economic particularities, tion and conviviality found in the Mediterranean but widespread have been left on the periphery of growth-based development, in the world’s ‘Souths’ more generally (Cassano, 2012). We con- sider the co-production of the values of Southern thought and ‘is- landness’, an experiential identity linked to the condition of ⇑ Corresponding author at: ICTA, Edifici Z, Despatx Z/105Carrer de les columnes, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona E- 08193 Bellaterra (Cerdanyola del Vallès - islands, shared by islanders and visitors alike (Conkling, 2007). Barcelona). We explore how alternative (degrowth-like) imaginaries and prac- E-mail address: georgios.kallis@uab.cat (G. Kallis). tices have been produced and transformed in these two islands, by https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2022.105957 0305-750X/Ó 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). G. Kallis, A. Varvarousis and P. Petridis World Development 157 (2022) 105957 asking: What are the main expressions of these imaginaries? How We are particularly concerned with one type of real-existing did they come into existence in these geographies, how did they degrowth alternative not covered by Demaria et al, namely territo- (co)evolve over time, and to what effect? In Ikaria we show how, ries at geographical margins that, for one or another reason, remain over time, a spirit of alterity akin to degrowth emerged and was in a tenuous state of what Latouche (2004) calls ‘a-development’, embodied in local economic practices and institutions. In Gavdos, that is, neither modernised and ‘developed’ nor underdeveloped. we focus on how the remoteness of an insular location is mobilized This resonates with Dhar and Chakrabarti (2019) ‘world of the to animate imaginaries and practices of a frugal, communal living. third’ – formations that are neither capitalist nor pre-capitalist, Section 2 introduces the term degrowth, and explains the con- but non-capitalist, constituting peoples that are neither fully cept ‘real-existing degrowth’. Section 3 presents two other core con- within the circuits of global capital nor outside it. Whereas Dhar cepts used in this article: Southern thought and islandness. Section 4 and Chakrabarti seek their ‘world of the third’ in the so-called third presents the two case study locations and describes our methods. or developing world, we focus instead on the concept of a ‘South Sections 5 and 6 outline historical processes of real-existing within the North’ – pockets of (relative) a-development within degrowth in the two islands, and section 7 concludes with lessons the core geographies of capitalism. By a-development we do not for degrowth theory. mean a lack of capitalist development, but specifically a strong presence of, and co-existence with pre- or non-capitalist forms of economic and social organizing. This ‘turn to the North’ has the 2. What is degrowth? advantage of positioning degrowth in locations where it is to be applied and not in some context of otherness that can be difficult Degrowth is a diagnostic and prognostic frame that a commu- to incorporate (Stavrides, 1998). nity of activists and researchers mobilizes in response to questions In doing so, we connect to broader debates about post- of social and environmental justice (Demaria et al., 2013). The development in the Global North. Post-development has become frame attributes the multi-dimensional crisis of the West (a crisis a main source of degrowth theory (Demaria et al., 2013). What of ecological breakdown, of inequalities, and a crisis of cares) to Hickel (2020), for example, describes as ‘degrowth’, others describe the capitalist economic imperative of grow at all costs, or else col- as ‘un-developing’ the North (Ziai, 2019) – stopping the unequal lapse. Degrowth’s prognosis articulates personal and communal (ecological and labour) exchange and exploitation of the South action with political organizing, directed towards radically reform- by the North. Serge Latouche, an economic anthropologist working ing states from within, and calling for changes in public invest- in Africa and Southeast Asia and a prominent member of the post- ment, property, work, taxation and distribution (Kallis et al., development school, constructed degrowth theory in the late 2020). The essence of degrowth is the notion of living well with 1990s by linking critiques of development with demands for ‘de- less (Hickel, 2020), or what Serge Latouche has called ‘frugal abun- growth’ by green, anti-globalization activists back home in France. dance’ – forms of sharing and distribution that allow societies to Ecological and energy concerns, downshifting, voluntary simplicity prosper with little (Latouche, 2012). Other core principles include and post-growth economic policies feature in the degrowth litera- care, conviviality, autonomy, and ‘depense’ (a festive expenditure ture, but not in that of post-development (Demaria et al., 2013). of surplus, instead of its accumulation) (Kallis, 2018). The ‘de’ in But when it comes to the actual social processes involved in the degrowth is then not only about less, but about politicizing the implied change, moving beyond growth means also moving economic (Fournier, 2008), ‘decolonizing the imaginary’ beyond the prevalent model of capitalist and modernist develop- (Latouche, 2012) – approaching wellbeing in non-economic terms, ment – so the line between degrowth and post-development is beyond a one-way future focussed only on growth. As we will illus- hard, and perhaps not so necessary, to draw (see Escobar, 2015). trate with the two empirical cases developed here degrowth marks a cultural or even ontological shift, not just a shift in economics or policy. 3. Southern thought, islands and degrowth In sustainability studies and ecological economics, the empha- sis has been on how to degrow production and consumption equi- 3.1. Southern thought tably, given the dramatic reduction of energy and resource use necessary in high-income countries to keep the global economy Here we draw linkages between degrowth thinking, and Franco within planetary boundaries (O’Neill et al., 2018). In the social Cassano’s thesis of ‘Il pensiero Meridiano’ or ‘Southern thought’, an sciences, there are efforts to learn from concrete experiences about autonomous Southern point of view, whereby the South is not an what ‘living without growth’ could look like (various contributions incomplete ‘not-yet’ North, nor thinks of its pathologies as a conse- in Gezon & Paulson, 2017). In a recent collection, Demaria et al. quence of a lack of modernity. Cassano invites one ‘not to think of (2019) investigate ‘geographies of degrowth’ – territorial experi- the South in the light of modernity, but rather to think of moder- ences of voluntary and involuntary slowing down. They point to nity in the light of the South’ (Cassano, 2012: 1). Central to this three types of relevant experiences: ‘nowtopian territories’, such is reclaiming ‘southern’ values of slowness, moderation and con- as transition towns or eco-villages, with organized processes of viviality. The South here is not a strict geographical demarcation voluntary downshifting; ‘insurgent’ territories, such as the Chiapas (Greece for example is in southern Europe, but north of the equa- and other ‘temporary autonomous zones’ (Bey, 2003) that coalesce tor), but a condition, a spirit and posture opposed to Occidental around resource conflict areas, where people organize to stop values of utility, perpetual advancement and growth. extraction and enclosures, developing their own alternatives along Like degrowth scholars, Cassano defends slowness against the the way; and ‘liminal territories’ (Varvarousis, 2022), such as growing acceleration of life that destroys diverse forms of human crisis-hit Argentina or Greece, where tentative and temporal soli- experience (Rosa, 2013). Cassano’s intention is not to ‘replace the darity experimentations develop in the ruins of failed growth fundamentalism of speed with one of slowness, but to return economies. We can think of such experiences as ‘real-existing humanity to its mastery over time’ (Cassano, 2012: xxix). Modera- degrowth’ – imperfect and incomplete processes of resisting tion is ‘a dialectic point of equilibrium against all kinds of funda- growth or adapting to its end through tentative alternatives. We mentalisms’ (Cassano, 2012: xxv); not a banal middle ground, call these approaches ‘real-existing’ in juxtaposition to the but an awareness of limits and contradictions. Following Camus, plethora of idealised, normative (‘utopian’) models put forward Cassano imagines an alternative project for Europe rooted in in some degrowth literature. repressed values of the Mediterranean: ‘the balance and equilib- 2 G. Kallis, A. Varvarousis and P. Petridis World Development 157 (2022) 105957 rium between extremes; the awareness of final limits and bound- Others highlight the omnipresence of the coast in islands, creat- aries; . . .; the respect for nature’ (Cassano, 2012: xxi). ing a littoral zone (Pearson, 2006) or ecotone (Gillis, 2014), where There is an affinity here with a degrowth discourse that pro- two ecosystems connect creating a unique environment different poses a planned slowdown to respect planetary boundaries, pursu- from each. Recent island scholarship conceptualises islands as ing wellbeing by a convivial reclamation of the commons. The simultaneously open and closed systems, insular and embedded degrowth debate began in Mediterranean France and the resem- within complex multi-relational systems, emphasizing interac- blance of Southern thought to Latouche’s theory of ‘frugal abun- tions rather than boundaries (Hayward, 2012; Pugh, 2016). The dance’ is not accidental. Both Cassano and Latouche link their boundaries of an island are not a fence, but a ‘filter’ of flows – back claims to Albert Camus’s ‘happy poverty’ based on communal con- and forth of the islanders, and of interactions with ‘outsiders’ who viviality (Kallis, 2019). Cassano could be writing a degrowth man- come and go or stay. ifesto when he calls for ‘a [different] path that, by decommodifying Islandness then is not just a ‘sense of place’ (Massey, 2013), but at least in part the sun and the sea, makes them become again also the practice of human relations, the ‘doing the island’ (Vannini shared public properties and the centre of Southern identity; a & Taggart, 2013). This process can encompass ‘how distinctive path that removes the negative sign from all statistics of the South, island identities develop, how they are experienced and what because it stops comparing with that which is other than itself’ effects they have on habits of thought and action, on socio- (Cassano, 2012: 78). Instead of aspiring to become richer by enclos- economic structures and political processes, and the way that ing and expanding private bounties, such a path would ‘instead these engage with the externally determined facts of geography restore roads, beaches, and gardens to everyone, when we are and history’ (Warrington & Milne, 2007: 381-2). cured of the obsessive search for separation and distinction’ Revisiting Cassano and degrowth from the perspective of (Cassano, 2012: 15). islandness, the issue is not so much the supposed structural Cassano uses ‘the South’ as a metaphor for the Souths (and homology between islands’ physical geography and alternative Southern spirited subjects) of the world, but sees the Mediter- modes of thought, but how special insular experiential identities ranean especially and its geography exemplifying this desired form and contribute to a diversity of modes of existence. Could moderation. A lake-like sea, the Mediterranean’s ever-present land the emotional geography of islands, the condition of islandness, and sea, in proximity to one another, serve as an antidote to terri- help us understand and collectively design alternative develop- torial or Atlantic fundamentalisms, he argues. ‘If land grounds mental pathways (Karampela et al., 2017; Petridis et al., 2017; identity, common belonging, and the social contract, the sea illus- Stratford, 2008)? trates, by contrast, the idea of departure, the pointing of the bow Hay (2006, 2013) argues in favor of a phenomenological on a freely chosen route, the adventure of individual freedom’ approach to studying island identity through the critical reflection (Cassano, 2012: Prologue, l). The Mediterranean, according to Cas- of lived experiences. We report here on such lived experiences sano, is a sea that connects as much as divides; a sea of diversity from two remote Greek islands, Ikaria and Gavdos, showing how and moderation where the ‘other’ is always present. Mediter- ‘Southern thought’ and ‘islandness’ play out in concrete geograph- ranean values can then become antidotes to the crisis of Occidental ical contexts in ways that produce tentative and incomplete alter- economic paradigms of speed, excess and unlimited growth. natives that one can consider as real-existing degrowth. Southern Cassano traces Southern thought to classical Greece, finding a thought, we argue is not an a-temporal quality, but a set of ideas ‘structural homology between the geographic configuration of and imaginaries continuously expressed and transformed through Greece (and the relationship between land and sea) and its culture’ practice. We show how developing consciousness and a sense of (p.16) . . . with ‘the fractal geography of the Aegean [being] crucial pride around a ‘Southern’ difference is a crucial condition through to the development of ancient Greek thought’ (xix). The Aegean Sea which a project of degrowth can get established and become vol- and the Mediterranean, Cassano argues, separate lands and set a untary and desired, rather than involuntary or accidental. distance that is never the excess of the seemingly limitless ocean. Cassano (2012) points to continuous swings between represen- Which brings us to islands. tations of the Mediterranean as a tourist paradise and an archaic underdeveloped hell, calling for a balance where the pathologies of the Mediterranean are not essentialised but its wounds (sic) 3.2. Islandness ‘are discussed’ (pp. 136). The challenge, he writes, is ‘not archaeo- logical but political’ (pp. 53). He stops short of attending to the Islands have been conceptualised as microcosms or laboratories political production (and destruction) of Mediterranean’s alterity where their boundedness and usually small scale render processes and the social struggles involved in defending and renewing it. easier to study (Grove, 1995; Royle, 2014). In social science as well As Lawler (2016) notes, in the international press, one can find arti- as in popular culture, islands are often seen as enclaves of differ- cles about longevity and living well on the Greek islands side by ence, enclosing ‘the ideal’. Utopian thinkers such as Thomas More, side with those celebrating policies of austerity that target pre- contemporary radical scholars and even urban dwellers have used cisely this ‘lazy’, ‘underdeveloped’ mode of living. Attributing alter- the metaphor of the liberated island stronghold to distinguish an ity to an external fractal geography destroyed by an amorphous ‘unspoiled’ inside from a hostile outside (Stavrides, 2013). force of ‘modernization’ and ‘development’, Cassano, however, fails Island studies (Baldacchino, 2004, 2006) marked an important to distinguish the particular political economic-ecological pro- turn, studying islands on their own terms and through the lens of cesses through which difference is obliterated by capitalism. The the condition of islandness. The formation of a shared identity work of geographer Eric Clark on ‘island gentrification’ is crucial based on geographical isolation is found in peripheral areas, moun- in this respect. tain valleys or even metaphorical islands. Real islands though share Island gentrification refers to a marked shift upwards in the a particular, largely common experiential identity (Baldacchino, income and class of those who live (temporary or permanently) 2006; Conkling, 2007; Stratford, 2008), widely felt, yet conspicu- on an island, with increased investment in the built environment ously hard to pin down. Key here is the effect of the sea (Hay, catering primarily to the needs of the incoming ‘gentry’, displacing 2013). Conkling (2007: 191) describes islandness as ‘a metaphysical lower class inhabitants and/or the practices and economies that sensation that derives from the heightened experience that accom- sustain them (Clark et al., 2007). Gentrification is driven by rent- panies physical isolation . . . reinforced by boundaries of often seeking, money invested to ‘under-valorised’ properties and land frightening and occasionally impassable bodies of water’. (Clark & Pissin, 2021) and by the socio-cultural processes that 3 G. Kallis, A. Varvarousis and P. Petridis World Development 157 (2022) 105957 increase the potential value of previously unvalued or undervalued The topographies of the two islands are distinct. Ikaria is a land and property. A core contradiction emerges here. On the one rugged, mountainous island with lots of water, lush and green by hand, alternative projects of non-capitalist organization or Greek standards. The island is traversed by the Atheras range, degrowth stand against the tendency of capital for rent-seeking. whose summit is 1037 m, separating northern and southern Ikaria, On the other, these very projects of difference may create the cul- connected now by an arduous, windy road often fogged-in even in tural conditions for the re-valorization of an island environment the summer. There are beaches in the northern part of the island, (say by tourism attracted by an ‘alternative’, ‘un-developed’ feel) exposed to open sea and strong currents, making swimming hard that subsequently attract capital. The role of tourism under capital- even in summer. Gavdos, in comparison, is a hilly, dry island, giv- ism in sucking difference out of difference has been widely docu- ing the impression of a continuous sand dune full of juniper. The mented (Urry, 2008). In this article, we do not explicitly study temperature is hot. Rainfall is scarce and almost none from May such processes of gentrification in relation to the political (land) to September. Gavdos’s Libyan Sea waters are warm and calm. economy of the islands, but, as we argue in the discussion, our Both Ikaria and Gavdos have been places of political exile, clas- findings may be relevant. sified, by Athenians unfamiliar with the geography of their coun- try, alongside other remote islands as ‘kseronisia’ (dry islands) or ‘erimonisia’ (deserted islands), part of the ‘agoni grammi’, literally 4. Methods translated as ‘barren line’, a name used to refer to unprofitable shipping routes that the government subsidizes. Gavdos is alleg- 4.1. Case studies edly the mythical Ogygia, where the nymph Calypso held Ulysses as prisoner and lover for seven years. Ikaria is the island of Diony- The island of Ikaria is located 140 nautical miles to the east of sus, and takes its name from the legend of Icarus, his hubris-fuelled Athens. Gavdos is the southernmost part of Greece and the Euro- technological flight crashing on the island of the god of partying. pean Union, 190 nautical miles from Athens and 140 nautical miles Their relative remoteness has preserved elements of island life north of Africa (Fig. 1). Ikaria is an 8–10 h boat trip from Piraeus (or that attract, among others, counter-cultural youngsters in the sum- a 50-minute flight with a small passenger plane from Athens); mers. Ikaria made it to the global spotlight in 2012 as ‘the island strong winds prohibit access for about a third of the year. Gavdos where people forget to die’, the title of the second most emailed is a 3 h boat trip from Sfakia, Crete, which is a 2 h drive from Cha- article by the New York Times magazine that year, reporting on nia’s port and airport. the exceptional longevity of Ikaria’s elders and their simple yet Ikaria is a mid-sized (255 km2) island with some 164 km of healthy lifestyle (Buettner, 2012). Among Greeks, Ikaria is known coast. Gavdos is much smaller (32 km2) with 30 km of coast. About for its slow rhythm, its convivial ‘paniyiria’ (communal summer 8,000 people live yearlong on Ikaria, a population that visitors dou- feasts), and for its far-left politics and rebellious inhabitants, ble in summer. Ikaria has some 55–60 small townships, the three including the notorious Xiros brothers, hitmen of the 17 N urban larger towns being the capital Aghios Kirikos in the south, and guerrilla group that operated clandestinely in Athens from 1975 Evdilos and Raches in the north. Gavdos, in comparison, is sparsely to 2014. The leader of 17 N, Dimitris Koufontinas, spent his sum- populated with 152 permanent residents as of 2011, increasing to mers in Gavdos, ‘the Mecca’ of free camping in Greece, which around 3000 in August. attracts a rebellious young crowd from Athens every summer, will- ing to do the long trip to live days if not months under the clear sky. 4.2. Methodology We studied the historical and contemporary lived experience of the two islands using two main methodologies – desk research of the archives, and qualitative methods of interviews, group discus- sion and direct observation. In the case of Ikaria, the emphasis was on the historical trajectory of the island. In the case of Gavdos, his- tory takes a backseat, with the main material coming from partic- ipant observation of the beach communities of the island. As such, our project offers a two-sited, multi-method approach to a com- mon question: how and why did these tenuous Mediterranean paths of real-existing degrowth emerge, and how are they repro- duced over time? Our research does not seek to compare the two cases. It illus- trates and theorizes aspects similar to each of them, as well as the different dynamics playing out in the two distinct settings. Archival research worked best in the instance of Ikaria, and partic- ipant observation in Gavdos, though both projects mixed qualita- tive methods as fit for purpose and as driven by the research questions on which the research was based. The first author conducted fieldwork on Ikaria for five months from July to September in both 2013 and 2014, interviewing 35 local residents and visitors, as part of a project on island gentrifica- tion. The research was complemented by in-situ observations and off-the-record daily conversations as well as an exhaustive review of material concerning Ikaria in the archives of the National Library of Greece. Interviews were purposefully unstructured and open- Fig. 1. Location of islands of Ikaria and Gavdos within the Greek archipelago. ended, but centred around consistent themes identified in the lit- 4 G. Kallis, A. Varvarousis and P. Petridis World Development 157 (2022) 105957 erature/archival material. Life in Ikaria moved on after completion commons sustained by the island’s resource commons, where of the research in 2015, but this does not affect so much the ques- community is performed and renewed. The ecstatic shouts of joy tions and claims defended here, which are of a historical–geo- at the crescendo of Ikariot tunes by the mass of people dancing graphical nature concerning the origin, not the fate, of Ikaria’s arm in arm (Gerousis, 2014) best represent this spirit of common- alterity. The second author conducted fieldwork in Gavdos from ing in the very form of the festivity. May to September in both 2008 and 2009 and in August 2019, We do not evaluate how close to a normative degrowth ideal recording 25 biographical (life-story) interviews and conducting Ikaria is, or whether this difference can resist inexorable forces of one focus group. This author has been a seasonal visitor in the capital. Rather, we ask how this ethos and praxis came to be? free-camping community of Gavdos for a total of over 20 months We embarked on a historical–geographical approach to the ques- since 2002, conducting themed off-the-record discussions and in- tion following clues from our interviewees, supported by archival situ observations, studying Gavdos as an example of alternative research showing how physical geography, historical contingency, tourism that embodies principles of degrowth. politics and local Southern thought combined (and combine) with ‘islandness’ in producing a path to degrowth. In the remaining of this section, we show how over time the historical geography of 5. Ikaria the island and the interactions with outsiders shaped the particular political economy and ethos described above. We emphasise the 5.1. Real-existing degrowth: the island at present role played by a local folk thought akin to Southern thought that re-valued what from an Occidentalist perspective could be seen Here we explain why we see Ikaria as a case of real-existing as a sign of backwardness, to a point of pride. degrowth, before moving to explain how this links to its changing geography on the one hand, and its particular history on the other. In July 2013, the first author presented on degrowth at a confer- 5.2. The geography of the island ence in Ikaria on ‘Crisis and the New Mediterranean’ (Kosmatopoulos et al., 2013). The audience assented when a local Here we look at the physical environment of the island and its commented that ‘‘we’ve lived this way long before you invented location and changing relation with respect to nodes and flows of degrowth”. Indeed, in Ikaria, one finds a range of remnant and rein- economic activity. Like Cassano who attributes Southern-ness to vigorated non-capitalist practices, a prevalent ethos akin to that of the Mediterranean Sea, our interlocutors when prompted to degrowth, locals who identify with degrowth when the idea is pre- explain Ikaria’s different path compared to the mainland or even sented to them, active resistance to growth projects, and institu- nearby islands, pointed to the island’s physical geography; its tions, such as the paniyiri, dedicated to a festive and communal remoteness, harshness and steep mountains cultivating attributes expenditure of surplus. Let’s see each in turn, with material from such as autarky, respect for nature, communalism and our empirical research. rebelliousness. First, Ikaria has a diverse and low intensity economy oriented Physical geography does indeed bear upon the social and eco- towards sufficiency. Our research observations and site visits for nomic structures of the island. Pirates ravaged the Aegean until interview attest to a presence of many households combining the 19th century and Ikaria’s forested mountains offered hideouts incomes from tourism, public sector jobs or pensions, with prac- for islanders (Chrysochoos, 2010). In other Greek islands, people tices of self-subsistence or informal production for local exchange settled in fortified castle towns typically around the only sizeable networks. Subsistence practices include vegetable and fruit har- water source. Ikaria instead has a diffused availability of ground- vesting, vineyards, olive and almond trees, together with hus- water in the hinterland and a clustered network of mountain bandry of pigs and chickens (see also Chrysochoos, 2010). There kinship-based townships emerged out of hideouts from the pirates. are extended networks of exchanging favours and goods or produc- These, in turn, served to create strong communal bonds and auton- ing food directly for restaurants, festivals or grocery stores. omous, quasi-democratic decision-making structures, largely Second, there is a noticeable widespread rebellious ‘anti- classless (Bareli, 2007). Features that today surprise the visitor, growth’ mentality against big private investments in the island. A given their contrast to modern norms, including a pronounced lack recent example are the on-going mobilizations against plans for a of punctuality by the locals, can be traced to a not-so-distant past corporate wind-farm at mountain Atheras (Bareli, 2014). when people walked the mountain from village to village and ‘ar- Third, when we asked interviewees what is special about their rived when they arrived’ (Ikaria interview No. 3, hereafter I#3, see island, in line with Conkling’s thesis of islandness, they pointed also Kapetanios, 2010). to a distinct ‘sensation’. This sensation was said to involve slower, By emphasising this alterity, we do not mean that capitalism more humane rhythms, conviviality, and an ethos of sufficiency has been absent. The transition to capitalism started in the 19th and equality – all core significations of degrowth. Our interlocutors century, but it did not fully upend the classlessness of pre- used anecdotes to explain what they referred to: describing people capitalist Ikaria. This may possibly be because the lack of sufficient arriving to appointments in ‘Ikarian time’, that is, a ‘few hours late’ plains prevented large-scale agriculture and the emergence of or shopkeepers telling bewildered tourists that ‘the shop will open propertied land elites, as occurred in nearby Samos (Papalas, when it is time to open’ or that they, the customer, ‘shouldn’t buy 2005). Apart from a few merchants at the ports, Ikaria then did more because they don’t really need it’; destination weddings by not witness the emergence of a strong bourgeoisie (Pamphilis, Athenians with Ikariot waiters refusing to serve and joining the 1928). In the second half of the 20th century, Ikaria’s distance from party instead; stories of Ikariots shaming outsiders when they dis- Athens kept it beyond the reach of state-driven modernization. played their wealth. More recently, the lack of calm sea waters prevented the mass This Southern spirit of simplicity and conviviality is condensed tourist development seen in other Aegean islands (I#13). Thus, within Ikaria’s summer festivals, the paniyiria. Villagers collec- given this particular historical geography and political economy tively organize these all-day all-night events. Meat and produce of the island non-capitalist practices and norms continued to co- comes from the village and revenue stays local re-invested into exist alongside models of capitalist organization prevalent and public works: improving roads, public squares, schools and imported from the mainland. But geography is not set in stone; churches. For Bareli (2007) the paniyiri is an ‘institutionalized next let us turn to how the position of Ikaria within the world exchange system’, a Maussian gift-exchange/potlatch; a social has been changing as the world around it has been changing. 5 G. Kallis, A. Varvarousis and P. Petridis World Development 157 (2022) 105957 5.3. Geography in flux Communist Party, whose members still revere the Soviet Union, dominates politics in Ikaria, and has done since the end of the mil- The location of Ikaria may be fixed, but location attributes itary junta in 1974. At the same time that Ikaria attracted interna- change as the world changes; and so do the advantages and disad- tional attention as a longevity Blue Zone, ‘the red rock’ island was vantages of the island’s physical environment. Ikaria today is con- visited by the Wall Street Journal searching for answers as to why sidered a remote island, in relation to the Greek capital of Athens, Greeks were turning to the radical left (Angelos, 2012). KKE has but in the 5th century BCE, Ikaria was the neighbour of the then built an organic economic network supporting its members in banking and religious centre of Delos (50 nautical miles to the Ikaria. It is not ‘anti-growth’ (I#5, 12), but anti-capitalist, and pri- west), which it supplied with wine and timber. As a result, in clas- oritises low-profit agriculture over tourism (I#23). Communists sical times, Ikaria supported a population equally numerous to that and leftists have put up obstacles to developmental projects that at present (Chrysochoos, 2010). It became, however, almost unin- would face little opposition elsewhere. Ikaria’s leftism kept it also habited by 1st century BCE, following the loss of importance of out of the (mostly right-wing until the 1980s) governments’ clien- the Aegean region generally, with a population in the low hun- tele networks of subsidies and spending, further curbing growth. dreds that continued that low for many centuries. The intention therefore was not degrowth, but the result was, as This changed in the 19th century, as the island came within the growth-based development was stopped in its rails. As we will orbit of an economically-booming Asia Minor (Giagourtas, 2004; show next though, this particular radical politics of Ikaria were Papalas, 2005). Izmir, a Turkish metropolis, is 200 km to the east made hegemonic through the development of a particular indige- of Ikaria, and was the economic heartland for Greeks living under nous thought that valorised this communal, ‘anti-growth’ spirit – Ottoman rule. Thirteen thousand people came to live in Ikaria by a thought that shares many commonalities with Cassano’s South- the end of 19th century in an economy that exported currants, ern thought. charcoal and charcoal workers to the Turkish mainland (Giagourtas, 2004). With the independence of Ikaria in 1912 and 5.5. Island Southern thought becoming common sense its unification with Greece, followed by the Greco-Turkish war of 1922, the expulsion of Greeks from Turkey and the sealing of the Here we show how local intellectual production has shaped Greco-Turkish border, Ikaria’s economy collapsed, the island Ikaria’s oral/folk tradition (Kapetanios, 2010), which has, in turn, becoming a backwater in an independent Greek state centred on reinforced the insistence – and pride – of locals in their own ways. distant Athens. But such remoteness should not also be seen as Consider ‘The Republic of the Humble’, a 1921 utopian novel writ- an absolute feature, but rather as a filter that shapes who comes ten by Athens-educated island-MP Charalambos Pamphilis. The in and who goes out, and in this way, produces the place and its hero wakes up in 1936 to find a classless society in Ikaria ‘of Bol- particular politics. To these issues we next turn. sheviks who live the same, simple life’, working only four hours a day, rationally meeting their needs using a local, wheat-linked cur- 5.4. Interaction with outsiders and the political radicalization of Ikaria rency. The parallel to core degrowth principles today, such as working-hour reductions and community currencies cannot be Island identities are not shaped within island boundaries. They missed, signalling the continuity between socialist-utopian ideals form through encounters. At the end of the Greek Civil War in of the past with those of the present. 1945, Ikaria took in 13,000 political exiles, doubling its population Pamphilis’s novel echoes utopian literature popular at his time, (Chrysochoos, 2010). Radical communists were sent to concentra- especially Cabet’s 1840 ‘Voyage to Icaria’, that associates the name tion camps on uninhabited islands; Ikaria instead took in less hard- ‘Icaria’ with a communal utopia. Ikariots’ (unfounded) speculations line sympathizers from the anti-Nazi unity front – many of them today that Cabet was inspired by travellers’ accounts of real Ikaria intellectuals, professionals and artists. Exiles lived in the towns, and the publishing of the Greek translation of the novel by the Ikar- renting rooms, renovating empty houses, teaching, offering medi- ian Studies Association, vividly illustrate how the fictional Icaria cal care and organizing public works (Mamoulaki, 2011). Later, influences contemporary Ikaria. Pamphilis (1928) published news- many of these exiles returned with their families, constituting papers and magazines and wrote Ikaria’s first history. Seventeenth the first ‘tourists’ to the island (Chrysochoos, 2010). and eighteenth century travellers described a destitute Ikaria This intermingling of locals and exiles radicalized Ikariots’ pol- where everyone was poor. (This may have been an orientalist itics, giving ideological content to a pre-existing communalist impression aggravated by islanders overplaying their poverty to spirit and classless experience (I#23). Ikariots were not only de- visitors for fear of taxation, in the absence of Ottoman garrisons). growthers before degrowth, but ‘communists before communism’, Pamphilis instead revisioned the island’s system as primitive com- an interviewee told us (I#3). In fact the Greek government started munism and a blissful sufficiency economy; a prevalent view about sending exiles to Ikaria in the 1930s because the island was already the island’s past that our interlocutors hold today. One sees here considered irredeemably leftist (Chrysochoos, 2010). The economic elements of the process Cassano notes as turning a negative sign crisis following unification in 1922 and the closure of markets in of backwardness into a positive sign of Southern pride. Turkey led many Ikariots to immigrate to the United States. Fol- This pride is common sense today in the island. The island his- lowing the Depression, some returned, bringing back socialist ideas tory written by conservative I. Melas in 1955 proudly describes from trade union organizing, to which fellow islanders had already Ikariots as predecessors of Gandhism (Melas, 1955). Ikarian- been exposed via the intellectual exiles, teachers or Greek refugees American Professor of History, Anthony Papalas (2005), laments from Turkey (Chrysochoos, 2010). Communist ideals, crucially, the fact that Ikariots now dislike ‘anyone who became financially found fertile ground on an island where communalism was its successful and made large investments in Ikaria to bring about lived experience. change’ (p.140). But even he himself celebrates these ‘rebels and In the long run, ‘real-existing degrowth’ came about as the radicals’, the title of his book on the history of Ikaria. locals inadvertently defended communalism against a capitalist Ikaria’s alterity was fortified by its depiction by outsiders who model of development, resisting, and often impeding modernizing were inspired by it. Lilika Nakou’s ( best-selling novel, for instance, projects. Today locals joke about ‘Cuba, North Korea and Raches ‘The visionaries of Ikaria’, written in 1982, fictionalized Ikaria’s Ikaria’ being the last bastions of communism. Significantly, 60 to rebellious Southern, anti-growth mentality, in turn reinforcing 70% of Ikariots consistently vote left of centre (70% in the 2019 local identification with such stances. The plot revolves around a national election compared to 40% nation-wide). KKE, the Greek group of locals impeding the efforts of an Ikariot-American to 6 G. Kallis, A. Varvarousis and P. Petridis World Development 157 (2022) 105957 invest in the revival of a spa hotel, with the heroes rejecting enrich- No island is an ideal cosmos. As Klein and Morreo (2019) note, ment and defending their island ways. an attention to post-development practice should not come at the expense of underplaying the dominating nature of capital. The 5.6. Back to the present revalorization of Ikaria as a place of difference and escape fosters tourism and gentrification, changing, slowly at present, the social What does this detour in Ikaria’s history have to do with composition of the island in the summer months of July and degrowth? Our thesis is that a particular historical- August, and orienting the local economy towards the needs of vis- physical geography that nourished a communal spirit led to a com- itors. Yet, the stubborn persistence of alternative ways of being and munalist ethos, politics and thought, whose result was to keep the doing in Ikaria merit attention. Opening shops late at evening at island out of processes of modernized development. Real-existing 10 pm, arriving late to appointments, eating from your own orch- degrowth was an unintentional result, but one that can be ard, dressing like Fidel Castro and driving dilapidated cars are signs explained. Such real-existing degrowth is now sustained, tenta- of difference that no longer correspond to the economic rationality tively, through the reproduction, and renewal, of supporting that gave rise to them. Few shop-owners are forced to open late for beliefs, practices and institutions. Crucial here is the role of a example because they work in the fields till sunset as their parents new wave of incomers inspired by alternative imaginaries: did. Most Ikariots can afford new cars and clothes. An ethos of counter-cultural summer visitors (‘Exarchia moves to Ikaria in degrowth has taken root we showed here, through a combination the summer’, one interviewee told us, referring to the Athenian of geographical and historical factors, and through the emergence anarchist student neighbourhood, hotbed of anti-austerity of a folk thought that has valorised it and made it a sign of pride. revolts); and ‘back to the (is)landers’ lured by the promise of a Crucially, it has become also political to the extent that people more convivial and natural way of living (I#1, 3, 5). organize also occasionally to defend it. This visitors’ romanticism reinforces in turn locals’ practices and politics. Returning Ikariots have set up an independent move- 6. Gavdos ment/party with strong showings in local elections and local mobi- lizations. Returning Ikariots and Ikariots ‘d’election’ – young, mid- While our story of Ikaria emphasised the historical and contin- life and pensioner – also renew traditions and their signification. gent political processes that produced difference, in Gadvos myth One interviewee commented that the paniyiris’ Dionysian turn and geographical remoteness come together in a vast repertoire began in the 1990s when his group of Athenian-Ikariots brought of alternative socioeconomic and spiritual practices and imaginar- loudspeakers to a paniyiri, reintroducing traditional music and ies producing communities of real- existing degrowth. organs to younger audiences in a party set-up, echoing the revival of neo-folk music then infusing Greece (I#35). The paniyiri in this respect is as much an old, traditional institution, as well as a new 6.1. An island ‘at the end of the world’ institution marking Ikaria’s alterity. Unlike most other Greek islands, Ikaria has few spaces of com- Here we argue that Gavdos’s location favoured certain pro- modified and privatized consumption. Ikaria’s younger and older cesses of local myth-making. Gavdos is very remote – geographi- generations mingle with tourists in the paniyiri. The locally cally and symbolically. As the southernmost point of Greece and sourced supplies of the paniyiri, capture revenues from tourism Europe, the island is in a liminal zone between Global North and that are circulated into the community (Bareli, 2007). There is a South, East and West. Its location and the absence of major infras- marked difference here with the model of tourism in other Greek tructure create a sense of isolation that evokes what Conkling islands, based on bars and restaurants owned by private entrepre- (2007) describes as the heightened experience of ‘islandness’. neurs, revenue accumulating for private purposes. The panyiri There is no bank or gas station on the island, no cash machines offers then a tentative alternative to the dominant model of capi- until 2018 and no credit cards accepted. The island is only partly talist tourist development experienced almost without exception powered by an electricity grid and its water supply system stops throughout Greece. running in the summer. There are new groundwater boreholes, We say tentative because this real-existing degrowth that we although many people still collect rainwater in the winter to drink described at the beginning of this section, and whose history we in the summer. We can speak of real-existing degrowth here in traced, is incomplete and vulnerable. Many interviewees feel old terms of lifestyles based on very low monetary incomes and Ikarian values are disappearing as the generation of elders die resource and energy use, compared to the mainland, and a lack (I#4). Some say that the orchards have become a hobby for pen- of the modern infrastructure that one associates with developed sioners; it costs more to maintain them than to buy food in the economies. super-market (I#3, 22) (Others disagree, pointing to seasonal At the southernmost tip of the continent, surrounded only by employment in tourism, leaving ample time for low-opportunity- sea, Gavdos’s insularity contributes to a sense of being ‘at the edge cost agricultural activities for the rest of the year (I#19)). Rebel- of the world’. Remoteness propagates the creation of ‘space-myths’ liousness is being commodified for tourism. As one hotel operator (Bousiou, 2008). Tradition and historical memory are more easily told us: ‘all publicity is good publicity’, even that of the Xiros preserved in islands, given their relative geographical seclusion brothers, who ‘gave the brand name Ikaria a scent of adventure’ (Pantzou, 2015). The myth of Calypso still inspires contemporary (I#13). The biggest paniyri, the one in the forest of Lagada, looks self-defined ‘castaways’ who narrate their relationship to Gavdos now more like a rave festival, with thousands of youth from Athens as being mesmerised, enamoured and ‘trapped’ on the island just camping there every August for days at a time. A few older locals like the mythical Ulysses. told us they now avoid August paniyiria. Others lament the paniyria becoming cash-making machines for communities, fund- 6.2. History and folk thought ing unnecessary building in the villages and breeding for consump- tion excessive numbers of wild goats that ravage the forests (I#5). While the flows of exiles created a blending of outsiders and While the communalism of Ikaria is marketed by some for tourist locals in Ikaria that further radicalized a pre-existing communalist consumption, real commons (such as hospitals, utilities, use of the spirit, Gavdos’s history of exiles operates now more as an imagi- mountains) are threatened by spending cuts and privatization nary source for producing otherness. Unlike Ikaria, Gavdos (Bareli, 2014). received some of the most renowned communist leaders of the 7 G. Kallis, A. Varvarousis and P. Petridis World Development 157 (2022) 105957 1930s and ‘40s, including Aris Velouchiotis, leader of the Greek Beach communities developed in the northeastern part of Gav- People’s Liberation Army (ELAS) and Markos Vafiadis, the Prime dos. In the 1980s, the first travellers camped at Sarakiniko, in the Minister and Minister for War of the Provisional Democratic small forest around the remnants of the exiles’ former settlement. Government of Greece (1947–1949). Gavdos’s extreme remoteness At this period, Sarakiniko was not inhabited, used only for animal was exploited by right-wing governments to create one of the breeding and for its access to the sea (G#1). The first small shop worst places of exile, ‘the death island’ as exiles called it selling vegetables and other goods opened as late as the mid- (Gritzonas, 2000). Its harsh conditions and lack of infrastructure 1990s, about the same time as travellers began moving further forced the exiles to self-organize into a ‘collective’ to manage north towards the beaches of Aigiannis and Lavrakas. Despite their everyday life, organize cooking, cleaning, education, work, and cul- prolonged stays on the island, often lasting up to 6 months, gener- tural events, establishing a libertarian school and introducing a ally people did not stay permanently on the beach until about 2000 community currency (Damaskinos, 2020). (G#3). At around this time, a series of small but important infras- Few Gavdiots remember this past. Yet the legacy of the exiles tructural developments allowed the first free-campers to spend the animates the island’s counter-hegemonic identity, apparent in entire year in these transient communities. Wells, kavatzas (huts), the webpage content of the municipal authority, in the island’s beach communal cafes, a small theatre, an improvised harbour, toponyms, and in the stories of contemporary ‘self-exiles’ who and both individual and community gardens started to spring up have moved permanently to Gavdos. Connection to the radical past at Aigiannis and Lavrakas beaches, with a community of 20 to 30 of the hard-line exiles meets self-exile and escape here. As one people living on the beach throughout the year. interviewee commented: ‘it was the seeking of the traces of Aris, Aesthetically, the beach community is characterized by an Markos and the other kapetanioi [partisan army leaders] that ini- intention to remain as invisible as possible and to not disturb tially inspired me and other libertarian communists to come here ‘the continuity of the natural landscape’ (G#2). All building mate- as self-exiles’ (G#11). The house of the political exiles, the so- rials are collected in situ; the import of wood, plastic and other called ‘palace’ at the edge of Sarakiniko beach, is a landmark. materials is highly discouraged, while the use of cement and other chemicals is not acceptable. As one interlocutor put it: ‘we don’t build, we just reshape nature’ (G#4). Nudism adds to an aestheti- 6.3. Encounters and new social relations cally archaic image. During the 2000s, the community functioned without electricity, whereas now several kavatzas are equipped Here we show how Gavdos has become over time a place of with small solar panels. intense experimentation with new social relations. While Ikaria’s Communal life in the beach communities is organized along tentative otherness is based on local ‘rebels and radicals’, fortified principles aligned with degrowth. Unnecessary fires are discour- by interactions with newcomers, Gavdos’s otherness was born of aged, and used only for cooking. People, especially those staying Gavdiots, Gavdiots ‘d’election’, seasonal residents and transient permanently on the beach, live very simply. Our research shows tourists. This plurality of new voices created a complex system of that the majority spends between 100 and 200€/month, and in socialization connected through a set of shared values reminiscent extreme cases less than 500€/year. Their diet is extremely frugal, of Southern thought and degrowth: incorporating a respect for nat- with little fish or meat, and meals are often shared. Slowness is a ure, slowness, moderation, simplicity, solidarity, conviviality, and flagship trait among beach-dwellers. Comparisons between the self-sufficiency. speedy rhythms of city life and the slowness of the island are com- Specific factors contribute to the malleability of its identity. mon. As one interviewee said: ‘Life is not a sum of seconds but a Locals are few. Outsiders describe them as carefree, simple, toler- sum of moments. It’s not linear but it flows like a song. Sometimes ant, hospitable, and uninterested in making money (Damaskinos, quickly and sometimes almost in stillness’ (G#5). Social life takes 2020; Galanakis, 2009). New locals (Gavdiots ‘d’election’) arrived experimental forms. Otherness is expressed in everyday improvi- on the island in the 1980s, initially as an extreme destination for sation and spontaneous individual and collective performances. alternative, naturalist vacations, and gradually as permanent resi- Respect for nature and care for the commons is imperative in the dents forming quasi-intentional free-camping communities on community and is often invested with spirituality or stories of the beaches and other remote places on the island, usually away sacredness. The most irrevocable rule on the beach is: do not cut from settlements. During the warmer months of the year, March junipers, not even the dry ones. to October, more people join these diverse beach communities. On the south side of the island, another idiosyncratic commu- nity has sprung up. Islanders call members ‘the Russians’, a group 6.4. The real-existing degrowth of beach communities of 10 to 15 people, some from the Ukraine, taking their nickname from the first one to arrive, ‘Andrei’. According to his own account, Why do we see Gavdos as a case of real-existing degrowth? Andrei is a scientist who worked in the Chernobyl power station Gavdos has lately become an alternative tourist destination. Thou- and was exposed to radioactivity during the explosion. He refused sands of travellers visit the island during July and August for free the therapy offered to exposed scientists and decided to live by camping, nudism, and enjoying its ‘end-of-the-world’ feel and nature, arriving in Gavdos in 1998 with a multi-ethnic group of sci- remote landscape, creating a human geography unlike any other entists and artist friends. They formed an exploratory community in the Greek archipelago. Tourism in Gavdos differs from other dedicated, in their words, to ‘the everyday practice of philosophy’. forms of institutionalized or budget travel (Andriotis, 2013). By Similar to the beach community, ‘the Russians’ embrace a frugal investigating the profiles, forms of interaction, and stylistic choices lifestyle, deep spirituality, self-sufficiency, and communal living. of visitors to the island, Andriotis (2013: 40) found that they were They have left their mark on the island by erecting a huge ‘antinomians’ who emphasize ‘independently organized, long-term totem-chair at the cave of Trypiti, the southernmost point of Gav- and flexible travel schedules, non-mainstream activities, rejection dos and Europe. The chair hangs on one leg to symbolize the ‘envi- of materialism and intense social interactions’. Our ethnographic ronmental instability and fragility of our times’ (G#12). research confirms and complements this description. To better Myths, histories, local traditions, and alternative practices, com- understand the contribution of these ‘antinomians’ to the making bined with the island’s geography and lack of economic or infras- of Gavdos’s otherness, one should shift the focus from the individ- tructural development, create in Gavdos a state of a-development ual to the temporary communities they create and the geographies or, what we call here, real-existing degrowth. By this we do not they produce. mean that the Gavdos beach communities offer an example of 8 G. Kallis, A. Varvarousis and P. Petridis World Development 157 (2022) 105957 degrowth that could, or should, be transposed elsewhere. They do the raw material for new imaginaries and new ways of living life. show how, in line with Cassano’s call to turn the negative sign of In dominant talk, a place like Gavdos is labelled as underdeveloped the South into a positive one, what from a ‘Northern gaze’, could or undeveloped – waiting to be developed. The lived experience of be seen as the dire and backward or undeveloped state of the the islanders tells a different story. Islanders and islanders d’élec- island, was turned into one with an identity of pride and tion no longer see themselves through the eyes of others - as being possibility. backward. Like Ikariots, Gavdiots too have a new-found self- Compared to the majority of the Aegean islands where tourism respect based on Southern values of simplicity, slowness, commu- development serves varied and often conflicting ‘tourist gazes’ nality. We define this as real existing degrowth, not because of a (Urry, 2008), contemporary Gavdos has a relatively coherent mode of living that is low in energy or resource use (which it is), socio-environmental and symbolic character: simple, frugal, slow, but because we understand degrowth as a positive transition convivial, communal, and relaxing. The performativity of its other- towards seeing and living differently what might otherwise be ness is reflected in the few new shops and restaurants opening to feared as a catastrophe (lack of growth). respond to increasing tourist flows. As one of our interlocutors As Hakim Bey (2003) claims, one cannot fight for something remarked: ‘Sarakiniko might differ from what I first encountered that one does not know. Here we charted a research agenda of in the 1990s but it is still Gavdos and is different from anything ‘knowing’ degrowth, by studying authentic processes of lived rele- else’ (G#5). vance. We investigated the conditions under which enclaves of real-existing degrowth can emerge and be preserved. Dhar and Chakrabarti (2019, 85) emphasise the importance of praxis. There 6.5. Politicizing alterity is no guarantee, they write ‘‘that the world of the third as (non- capitalist) space (unhooked from the circuits of global capital) shall Interestingly, Gavdos’s otherness also takes a political form. transform into the world of the third as (postcapitalist) place; the Whereas free-camping is discouraged or prosecuted by other local transformation is birthed through (postdevelopmental) praxis’. authorities around Greece, it is encouraged in Gavdos. In its official What our stories add is a focus on the geographical, historical webpage, the municipal authority denounces the government’s and myth-making occurrences that underlie, sustain and valorize law that prohibits free-camping as ‘pretentious’. The municipality’s alternative praxis over time. guidelines for camping are taken straight from the self-organizing We learn from our case-studies that remoteness and distance rules that an older generation of free campers had established for from the ‘more developed’ core (the capital, Athens) is important. the beach communities. The webpage discourse echoes Southern So too is the ability of the islands to divert resources from the core, thought and the values imbued over the years by the counter- while staving off pressure to pay them back with ‘development’. cultural visitors and Gavdiots ‘d’election’: a sense of freedom, This resonates with Romano’s (2012) observation of remote areas respect for nature, moderation, peace and calmness, self- in southern Italy and Albania living parasitically off metropolitan awareness and spirituality. One such Gavdiot ‘d’election’ who centres, and avoiding thus a full assimilation by the development moved to the island in 2006 won the 2016 elections and became process. Nonetheless, while remoteness keeps Ikaria or Gavdos mayor. Her vision was explicitly against conventional development out of the main circuits of capital and modernising development, and growth, a rejection of tourist investment and a promise instead this alone does not explain their difference, given that neighbour- to create ‘an alternative economy’ based on ‘cooperative produc- ing islands have suffered conventional fates, being drawn into tion’ and self-sufficiency. accelerating tourist capital flows. Remoteness, after all, is relative Islandness has nourished this alternative spirit and Gavdos’s - make a new airport, add daily flights and it vanishes. It is in the own myth. As an interlocutor who lived six years on the beach interaction between geography, historical contingency and the community commented: ‘what happens here could not be done production and assimilation of a localized and ‘indigenized’ mode on the mainland. It is the limit of the sea that feeds our desire of thought, prevalent in the South and often in the form of myths for self-sufficiency and it’s the bounded nature of the island that about the island’s past and its inhabitants, that productive possibil- unfetters our experimental mood’ (G#4). This boundedness awak- ities emerge. ens imaginaries of autonomy. As the mayor reiterated in a public How did ‘islandness’ help in rooting this Southern thought, interview: ‘islands are adjacent only to the sea. And no one has protecting delicate states of real-existing degrowth? The limits the right to decide for them without them’. of the sea inspire thoughts of autonomy. This boundedness of Like Ikaria, Gavdos’s otherness is not static. It undergoes a islands, we saw, is important, not only as an environmental deter- continuous process of (re)identification. As tourist flows grow minant, but as a set of conditions that catalyze and insulate the and the island receives attention from mainstream media, the emergence of self-valorizing myths and folk thoughts anchored pressure for commodification and tourist investment increases. in a sense of islandness. The bounded but porous nature of the (The election of a new mayor with a more conservative agenda insular ‘state of mind’ enables island residents and visitors to con- in 2019 might be the sign of a shift). Yet, alternative practices ceptualise, embody and transmit alternative imaginaries. The ‘sea and values in Gavdos have multiple sources and are rooted effect’ is omnipresent in Gavdos and Ikaria, limiting and liberat- now in local society. Gavdos’ss identity may be resistant to ing, protecting and reinforcing a specific, yet evolving, identity change, with the unspoiled nature of the island and its simple of place. life assuming a ‘sacred’ status. As a Gavdiot elder put it: ‘I don’t The limit of the sea and the boundedness of the islands is not like things that come from the city, I haven’t seen an apartment an absolute. It is a porous filter. Remoteness selects for the type block in all my life because I am not travelling outside Gavdos. of ‘foreigner’ coming to the islands. Interactions between visitors All these things look fake to me. What is real is only nature, and islanders create new possibilities and trajectories. Communist our temple’ (G#9). exiles ended up in the two islands because remoteness and boundedness made for natural prisons. These exiles left legacies 7. Thinking about degrowth from the Mediterranean of communality and self-organization that still reverberate. Counter-culture youth came next - wealthy in terms of time, Seen from the perspective of a unilinear model of development, not money, but willing to travel far and live simply - valuing Gavdos’s economic and social conditions are problematic. Seen the islands for their alternative spirit. This spirit was filtered from another perspective, these conditions are being turned into and fortified through conditions of interaction between islanders 9 G. Kallis, A. Varvarousis and P. Petridis World Development 157 (2022) 105957 and newcomers, sedimented in turn through political expression - Declaration of Competing Interest in the rebellious, radical left orientation of Ikaria or in the person of the mayor of Gavdos. These political expressions generate con- The authors declare that they have no known competing finan- crete resistances to conventional development and foster fledg- cial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared ling efforts to maintain difference, even if indirectly at times, or to influence the work reported in this paper. not even wholly consciously or successfully. To be clear: we do not position the two islands as exemplars of degrowth. We regard them as springboards for thinking about Acknowledgements such possibilities, more as living laboratories of Southern thought incorporating a different way of life. In thinking about degrowth, The first author is grateful to Nikolas Kosmatopoulos and the we argue here, one should look to enabling combinations of geog- Mataroa 2013 crew who first brought him to Ikaria, to the intervie- raphy, human interaction, imaginaries and political expression wees who offered generously of their time, and to Mania Spanou able to revalue, protect and experiment with different ways of and her family who open-handedly offered their house during Fall being and doing. By focussing on the possibility and performance 2014 fieldwork. Special thanks are owed to Ilias Gianniris who of difference, we do not mean to underestimate the political hosted him during the summers of 2013 and 2014, introduced economy of capitalism that profits from difference (Clark & him to the history and people of the island and drove him around Pissin, 2021). Processes of island gentrification are, as we noted, the rugged roads of Ikaria. Maria Barelia-Gaglia generally shared under way on both islands. The islands’ fate under the onslaught her library and review of the literature on Ikaria. The second author of capitalist enclosure, rent-seeking tourism and real estate devel- is deeply thankful to all Gavdiots and Gavdiots d’election with opment in Greece is unknown (more so, given the uncertainty whom he shared countless hours of summer jouissance that liter- about tourism futures in the pandemic context). Whereas the ally transformed his life. Ilias, Niki, Pimba, Maro, and Pavlos are push towards gentrification is always present and a latent possi- only a few of the many to name. He is also grateful to a small juni- bility, what drew us to these two cases is precisely why gentrifi- per tree at Stavrolimni for hosting him for so many months under cation has not yet taken off there. This does not mean that the its shadow. We thank Ros Sorensen for her editorial support and two islands have successfully resisted once and for all assimila- Christina Biliouri for producing the map in Fig. 1. We acknowledge tion under capitalism. Without favourable structural change at financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation higher scales (e.g. a changing political economy in Greece as a and Universities, through the ‘‘Maria de Maeztu” programme for whole), this would be impossible. What cannot be underesti- Units of Excellence (CEX2019-000940-M) as well as support from mated is that they have resisted, and that the reasons for their the Spanish Government through the project COSMOS (CSO2017- difference are not mere co-incidences. 88212-R). An important point not explored here is the power of ‘islands’ to change ‘the city’ (so to speak), through the life-changing experi- References ences of returning visitors. 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