Following the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the breakdown of the financial system in the USA, the economic crisis quickly spread to the other side of the Pacific, predominantly affecting the national economies of the South. Found at the epicentre, Greece has experienced an explosion of movements against austerity which challenged the legitimacy of neoliberal representative democracy. Nevertheless, rampant austerity measures provoked the rise of service-oriented repertoires, with numerous social solidarity structures providing welfare services to the suffering population (Kousis et al., 2018; Papadaki and Kalogeraki, 2017), which came to the forefront once the dynamic of the protests started to decline.

This period of transition provides the setting for the focal point of this book. By positioning the recent economic crisis and the subsequent austerity measures within the realm of contentious politics, this manuscript suggests that between 2008 and 2016 the social movement community in Greece, consisting of formal and informal social movement organizations (SMOs), grassroots networks and individual activists (Staggenborg, 2013), has gone through a transformative process which enabled the shift of social movement organizations’ interests towards the exercise of service-oriented repertoires of action. These service-oriented repertoires should not be confused with what critical scholars frame as the neoliberal institutionalization and professionalization of voluntarism (Rozakou, 2008, p. 114). Rather, it acquires the meaning of what anthropologists describe as gift-giving, with the provision of medical services, clothing, food, agricultural products and jobs to the victims of austerity (Papataxiarchis, 2016, p. 207).