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Paper short abstract

As the state is seen to be failing, the informal economy of agricultural products can be addressed as a material base for the rise of populism in rural Greece.

Paper long abstract

Across Europe, farmers are confronted with a range of challenges, including income instability, indebtedness, substandard working conditions, exhaustion, and social exclusion. The significant mobilizations that occurred in numerous European countries in 2024 represent a crucial development in the struggle of these farmers. However, these protests are not the sole avenue for addressing their concerns. In Greece, a wide range of agricultural products, including olive oil, dairy products, tobacco and alcohol, are produced by small family farms, then distributed through informal networks and finally consumed by relatives or friends, without state oversight and with non-payment of legal taxes to the Greek state. The proliferation of this informal activity has significant ramifications for the formation of fundamental aspects of social life, including the current definition of legitimacy. Moreover, the rich symbolic connotations of rural idyll embodied by (consuming) agricultural products mean that participation in informality is being experienced as a form of belonging (Kalb 2025). As the state is seen to be failing, trust in interpersonal relationships, as opposed to formal ways of organizing social life, leads (the) people to seek a personal, perceived as more valid commitment from the state when entering into the social contract. If informality simultaneously undermines the system on which it depends, so does populism (Kapferer 2019). The aim of this presentation is to demonstrate that the informal economy of agricultural products can be addressed as a material base for the rise of populism in rural Greece.