ABSTRACT
Considering the Greek events as an instance of contentious politics par excellence, this chapter aspires to make a contribution toward their analytical appraisal and theorization. It seems to us that existing conceptual tools, though useful for a preliminary assessment of the December eruption, are nonetheless lacking in ways that reflection on the Greek case may help highlight and remedy. The first, cardinal problem is conceptual. Outbursts such as the Greek December are typically portrayed (and subsequently discarded) as mere ‘riots’: instances of an undifferentiated violent repertoire, with all the related, crushingly negative connotations. ‘Riots’, however, are seldom defined – which precludes serious analysis and explication. Our first task, then, is semantic: to clarify the meaning of this key contentious form. Starting off from this conceptual core (What is rioting and how is it triggered?), however, we claim that the Greek events were something profoundly more intense and politically consequential: a special, hitherto theoretically underspecified form we dub Insurrectionary Collective Action (ICA).
