Δίκαιη Μετάβαση: Reframing the Politics of the Coal Transition in Modern Greece

Abstract

Greece will be among the first European countries to undergo a full coal transition by 2028, under the oversight of the novel European Just Transition Mechanism. This project has been framed as one of the most technically demanding endeavors in public discourse. Combining personal experience with the project, and anthropological literature, this Thesis traces the sociopolitical stakes of the transition on three overlapping planes: local resource politics, biopolitics and energopolitics at a broader scale, and the production (or suppression) of political subjectivities through the calculative devices employed in the transition. Through these parallel explorations, I aspire to make a jointly practical and theoretical point. In practical terms, I hope to demonstrate how a technical-first approach to the Just Transition project overlooks important sociopolitical considerations at its core, as well as generate important new aspects to be considered. In theoretical terms, I seek to explore how different theories of power – in fact, analytical frames of politics – connect scales (of space and time) and domains (of of life) to provide a thorough understanding of power shifts during pivotal, transition moments.