Research Team 1:
"Youth associations and public interventions around youth"

Research Team 1 (RT1) focuses on associations created by young people and on collective forms of public intervention centred on young people and children, which are recorded in different Greek urban centres during the 20th century.

The research objective is to investigate: a) when, how and why ‘youth’ becomes a focal point of public action; b) in what ways reference to ‘youth’ affects the agents of public intervention and the constitution of young people’s sociality in the public space; c) how young people’s subjectivities are produced both through collective action and through its articulation with public discourses on youth.

RT1 is based at the Department of History and Archaeology of the University of Crete. The Main Research Team Members (MRTM) include the Team Leader, Professor Efi Avdela, who is also the Project Coordinator, Dr Maria-Christina Chatziioannou, Director of Research at the Institute of Neohellenic Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation, and Associate Professor Eleni Forunaraki, at the Department of Sociology of the University of Crete. The Ex

ternal Research Team Members (ERTM) include Associate Professor Vassiliki Theodorou, of the Democritus University of Thrace, Dr Dimitra Lampropoulou, Lecturer at the University of Athens, Dr Despo Kritsotaki, post-doctoral researcher at the University of Crete on a fellowship from the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, Dr Flora Tsilaga, Dr Paris Papamichos Chronakis, visiting Assistant Professor at Brown University, Dimitra Vassiliadou, PhD candidate at the University of Crete with a bursar of the Herakleitos project, Maria Preka, PhD candidate at the University of Crete, and Eleni Papamakariou, post-graduate student at the University of Crete.

The members of RT1 have undertaken the following case studies:

Chistos Loukos, Eleni Fournaraki and Eleni Papamakariou, “Voluntary associations for youth and by youth in Syros during the first half of the twentieth century”
This study examines forms of voluntary collective action arising either from young people around a common identity issue or from elders in order to meet the needs of specific groups of young people. Research field is the island of Syros, where conditions for collective action were created early on because of the important development of the island’s capital, Ermoupolis. Since the late 19th century and during the first half of the 20th century a significant number of such forms of collectivities were formed, usually evolving into associations. The investigation will record and analyse these initiatives and actions, and will highlight the historical context in which they were created, their aims, the profile of their members, their evolution over time, and the outcome of their activities.

Maria-Christina Chatziioannou and Flora Tsilaga: “The commercial world of Athens, 1900-1950. Collective representation, apprenticeship and education”
In the first half of the 20th century the number of retail merchants, shop clerks and assistants increased in Athens and other Greek cities, such as Kozani in western Macedonia and Kalamata in the southern Peloponnese. This study explores the connection between the history of retail trade, the sector of shop assistants, their collective representation and professional training through the examples of the ‘Association of Shop Assistants’ and the ‘Commercial Association of Athens’. The latter, although at the centre of the research, is studied in comparison with the respective associations of Kozani and Kalamata. Additionally, this case study explores the ‘Association of Shop Assistants’, which had a different orientation from the association of shopkeepers, the relationships between the two associations and the role of merchants in training shop assistants. The issue of training was a central concern of shop assistants and one of the central actions of their association. Through the historical research and analysis of archives of commercial high schools and commercial schools of Athens, which offered specialized professional training, and the use of oral history testimonies, the researchers investigate the social position and the public interventions of this urban group of employees.

Maria Preka, “Versions of ‘youth’ and action for youth in the national discourse. The case of the ‘Society for the Dissemination of Greek Letters’ (SDGL)”
The Society for the Dissemination of Greek Letters was founded in 1869 in Athens. Its explicit aim was to establish schools for boys and girls in Greece, although its implicit one was to promote Greek nationalism in Ottoman Macedonia and Thrace. The research explores how and why ‘youth’– in its gendered dimension – became a focal point of public intervention for the SDGL, and the ways in which the reference to ‘youth’ shaped the form and content of this intervention, its transformation over time, as well as the ways in which discourses and practices were shaped in connection with or in opposition to state policies. The study covers the period from the founding of the SDGL until the first half of the 20th century.

Paris Papamichos-Chronakis, "The Christian Brotherhood Youth of Salonica and Maccabi Youth, ethnicity and gender in post-Ottoman and interwar Thessaloniki, 1912-1935"
This case study focuses on the two major youth associations of interwar Thessaloniki, the Christian YMCA and the Jewish Zionist Maccabi. It investigates their role in the construction of modernist male youth subjectivities, as both associations introduced the new gendered ideologies of muscular Christianity and muscular Judaism. Moreover, it examines their contribution to the Hellenisation of urban sociality but also to the formation of an alternative sphere of a distinctively Jewish public sociality. Thus, by examining the interplay of gender, ethnicity and youth, the project ultimately assesses the associations’ importance in the multiple transformations of the public sociality of a multi-ethnic city.

Dimitra Lampropoulou, “The collective action of working pupils in the 1960s”
Focusing on the “Association of Working High School Pupils (SEMME)”, the research examines the collective action of male and female pupils who were working during the day and attending evening schools in post-war Athens. Its starting point is that the working pupils’ collective action is related, on the one hand, to the role of education in the modernization projects of the post-war years and, on the other, to the emergence of youth as a crucial factor for the social movements of that period. The research is based on a wide range of written and oral sources.

Despo Kritsotaki, “Associations and institutions for the mental health of children and youths in post-war Greece (1950-1980)”
After the Second World War and the Greek Civil War a number of mental health initiatives developed in Greece, manyof which concentrated on childhood and youth. These initiatives took many forms: associations of professionals (mainly psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and special educators), associationsof parents (mainly parents of mentally retarded or autistic children), and institutions, such as Child Guidance Clinics, special schools and psychiatric hospitals. The present study uses archival sources and oral history interviews, in order to survey the network of services and agents for the mental health of children and youths between 1950 an 1980. It focuses on three specific agents – a scientific organisation, a parents' association and an institution: more specifically, the Association for the Mental Hygiene and Neuropsychiatry of the Child, the Association of Parents and Guardians of Mentally Retarded Children and the Centre of Therapeutic Pedagogy 'Stoupathio'.

Efi Avdela and Dimitra Vasileiadou, “The Associations for the Protection of Minors (1940-1960)”
The study examines the Associations for the Protection of Minors (EPA), a particular combination of voluntary work and state apparatus. Founded by the state as an assistant mechanism to the juvenile justice system, the APMs operated with volunteers and played a key role throughout the post-war period in establishing ‘youth’ as a public field of social welfare, supervision and intervention. The research focuses on the first period of the EPAs’ operation in Athens and Thessaloniki, and explores the forms of horizontal and vertical public sociality that they developed.

Vasso Theodorou, “Associations aiming at the health of children and youth, and the social welfare of childhood and motherhood (1890-1940)”
Based on primary sources, this is a study of the associations, societies and individuals that took the initiative of establishing institutions for the purpose of recording, supervising and improving child health and social welfare. Moreover, it examines the way public intervention attempted to popularize hygiene principles among the lower classes and to formulate normative attitudes towards the body, health, illness and motherhood. Research focuses on the activities of the Patriotic Foundation for Social Protection and Welfare (PIKPA) during the first forty years of the twentieth century.