Paper short abstract:

This paper analyses how people in austerity Greece understand their complex experiences of histories and futures and promotes the accommodation of messy narratives of time that may leave the researcher feeling sea-sick.

Paper long abstract:

The consequences of prolonged fiscal austerity have left people in Trikala, central Greece, with feelings of intense temporal vertigo - confusion and anxiety about where and when they belong in overarching timelines of pasts and futures. Some people report feeling "thrown back in time" to past eras of poverty and suffering, while others discuss their experiences of the current crisis situation as re-living multiple moments of the past assembled in the present (like the time of late Ottoman Empire landlords, occupying Axis forces, or the 1940s Great Famine). Embodying moments of the past, locals discuss their fears of returning to years of hunger and colonization whilst drawing courage that even the worst crises can be overcome. This paper analyses how locals understand their complex experiences of histories and futures and promotes the accommodation of messy narratives of time that may leave the researcher feeling sea-sick.