ABSTRACT
This paper discusses the forms that the interaction between public and private actors in the field of social provision took in twentieth-century Greece and their changes over time. Focusing on voluntary associations directly dedicated to offering social provision to various vulnerable groups, it examines cases from the interwar, the war and the post-war periods, where public employees instigated the creation of, participated in or created for themselves, voluntary associations that extended the field of social protection in various ways. Together with a multitude of volunteers of various sorts, they constituted social networks that changed over time in character and profile. Arguing for the case of Greece as a variation of the co-constitution of public and private in the history of twentieth-century European social provision, the paper provides materials that also refute arguments about the supposedly weak civil society in this country.
