Athens, Greece Research Proposal:

Radical Music in Athens

Curtis Dixon (211183878)

Acquiring Research Skills (ANTH 3110)

Professor Othon Alexandrakis

July 1st, 2014























Abstract
This research study meditates on the intersections of politics and aesthetic, where radical music
serves to simultaneously inform and re-imagine the localized realities of individuals in Athens, Greece.
By tracing a type of 'punk typography' and by noting acts of becoming by those agents, I hope situate
Athens among the broader international community by regarding both its local peculiarities and



benignities.

Introductions
Radical Music in Athens is a research project designed to explore how music and its respective
communities produce radical imaginings of aesthetic, identity, and politics within modern Greece. This
proposal will outline the primary research question, a rough description of the field site, a literature
review which will provide the tools necessary to navigate the research question, a design and methods
section, and a timeline of expectations as a means of scheduling my workload.
At this early juncture I'd like to address a few caveats and remarks in an attempt to reflexively
meditate on the roots of my interests in this research, and further, weigh what ideas I will bring in - my
positionality, various subject positions I occupy, and other intuitive baggage I will carry into the field.
For instance, I have been involved in punk music since my early teens and consider my political
alignment generally in fashion similar to most left-of-centre cliques prevalent in these communities.
That said, I recognize that these global sub-cultures have localized modes of understanding and
realities which break under the aegis of the international movement. Short of risking a narcissistic
recounting of my personal history, suffice it to say that I have a degree of both personal investment and
indulgence in this project though qualify these things in the recognition that many anthropologists
pursue topics which pique their taste, employing interest as a springboard towards a point of induction
and conversation.
The following describes the methods and methodological approaches for this research,



acknowledging that it is the prerogative of the anthropologist to inevitably adapt when his boots meet
the ground.

Research Question

Mediums of art represent various sites of imagining from which individuals can exercise
agency through acts of becoming. In regards to radical music in Athens, how do we come to
understand and co-produce knowledge through engaging the multiplicity of experience towards
a punk typography?

Literature Review
The existing literature I have chosen to draw upon is based on both Greek ethnography and the
theoretical framework of affect. The latter is useful in unpacking the urgency of bodies in the
production of, and in reaction to, both music and message. A corporeal understanding will hopefully
illuminate knowledge in a realm where emotion, reaction, and instinct are held in esteemed value. The
former ethnographies will inform a holistic representation of the current state of political affairs in a
country undergoing transformation. Additional reading will serve to understand broader themes in the
history and progression of ethnography as a thing unto itself, reflexively looking at how ethnography
functions as both method and methodology, and what ends it claims to accomplish in the process.




Baudrillard, J., & Glaser, S. F.
2010 Simulacra and simulation. Ann Arbor, Mich.: Univ. of Michigan Press.

Baulch, E.
2007 Making scenes: reggae, punk, and death metal in 1990s Bali. Durham: Duke University Press.

Behar, R.
1995 Women writing culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Biehl, Joao, & Locke, Peter
2010 Deleuze and the Anthropology of Becoming

Clifford, J., & Fe, N.
1986 Writing culture: the poetics and politics of ethnography. Berkeley, Calif.: University of
California Press.

Comaroff, J. L., & Comaroff, J.
1992 Ethnography and the historical imagination. Boulder: Westview Press.

Fabian, J.
1983 Time and the other: how anthropology makes its object. New York: Columbia University Press.

Geertz, C.



1973 The interpretation of cultures: selected essays. New York: Basic Books.

Hall, S.
1997 Representation: cultural representations and signifying practices. London: Sage.

Marcus, G. E., & Fischer, M. M.
1986 Anthropology as cultural critique: an experimental moment in the human sciences. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.

Panourgia, N.
2009 Dangerous citizens: the Greek Left and the terror of the state. New York: Fordham University
Press.

Taussig, M. T.
2011 I swear I saw this: drawings in fieldwork notebooks, namely my own. Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press.

Warner, M.
2002 Publics and counterpublics. New York: Zone Books.


Research Design and Method
The research design and method will draw mainly on life narrative and interviews with
consultants. By meeting individuals at possible points of interests musical venues, bars, live music



squats I hope to develop a relationship with particular spaces at particular times inasmuch as with the
individuals themselves. As rapport grows and the co-production of knowledge is given a third space to
flourish between anthropologist and interlocutor, I am optimistic new information will come alive as it
relates to my above focal research question.
Though these methods are partially imprecise by design, I have solid plans to meet with a friend
from Canada playing in town which will helpfully illuminate and direct my topic. In addition to that,
I've collected a number of venues, bars, and record shops which will serve as initial points of interest to
visit. From this information I can find my proper population and additional individuals, as well as new
spaces to visit.
In terms of my own accountability in the field, being aware of and employing the likes of the
following methods and methodologies will be paramount (excuse the following list-like groupings):
understandings of cultural relativism and its extension of moral relativism; the power of participant
observation; using fieldnotes to nurture dialetic relationships, as well as reviewing them to discover
new insight; awareness of my subject position what I bring into the field like context, race,
experience, and my positionality myself as an actor; finding and keeping informants, recognizing
whether they are key, casual, or other, and always searching for the organic intellectual on the ground;
utilizing the good of thick description to its fullest webs of meaning, messiness of connections,
intertwined cultural constructions and social discourses of actors; awareness of my audience/readers
and how I will ultimately write; the influence of post modernity in anthropology which stresses the use
of multivocality, lack of fixed univeral truths, and power as a fixture; and likewise, the critiques of post
modernity, like how the field concept only existing within the mind of the anthropologist; Taussig's



general notes on the field, witnessing, astonishment, and the magic encyclopedia; the idea of writing
against culture whereas we look towards the human condition and not the trope of particular cultures;
and finally, things like the awareness to sign vehicles, both as active constructs and involuntary
reactions, which differ in intentionality but inform the anthropologist differently about her consultant.

Timeline
Week 1: Orientation and discovery of Athens as a fieldwork space
Clearly, being placed in an unfamiliar environment is going to evoke a plurality of feelings;
excitement, astonishment and joy, juxtaposed by equal measures of confusion, anxiety and exhaustion.
As the impressionable neophyte anthropologist enters the field, she soon realizes that all these mixed
feelings speak to her training and represent opportunities for points of knowledge. Embracing these
moments of astonishment to dwell in the ambiguity of meaning should be cherished and explored to
its utmost logical and illogical conclusions.
On as practical level, my first week will be spent exploring neighbourhoods and attempting to
establish rapport with members of the musical community at various points of interest. Realizing the
limited amount of time given for this research project, I expect the progress still to be slow as I orient
myself. Working from these early seeds I've sown, it is my hope that I can locate some local hubs of
activity from which I can build upon in the following weeks.




Week 2: Immersion and interview
By the second week I should have some basic foundations consisting of budding contacts and
spaces which serve to catalyse conversation, allowing for a slow image of some reality to form. As
rapport develops between both informer and anthropologist, I hope to have some relevant data to parry
back towards the consultants by interview. Because my research ideas will need to localize adapting
what works and doesn't work from my original plan I will be careful not to waste any of my
interviewee's time with uniformed, irrelevant questions that don't live up to local realities.

Week 3: Data enrichment and plotting
It is my hope that by the third week that I have comfortably laid the necessary foundations for
research, found a (or some) key informant(s), visited locations, have conducted several interviews that
speak to the research question and, with any luck, reveal new lines of thinking and opportunity I had
prior not been privy to. This week also marks the point where a friend will be playing in Athens, which
may aid in new lines of enquiry.
There should be some patterns emerging from the data I've been collecting, along with the
respective outliers which I will continually try to expand on. By revisiting my fieldnotes, keeping a
diary, reading my ethnographic and theoretical literature, and generally being thoughtful and reflexive,
a mode of being, by-way of the lived experience of my informants and other data collection, should
begin to solidify.




Week 4: Wrapping up in Athens
The final week (plus a few additional days before my returning flight) will be marked by
continuing my research with the finality of it in mind. Final details that I may have missed, last
interviews, or anything of that nature, will be completed while I allow astonishment of new data to
continue trickling in. With this in mind, when I return home on the 31st of July I hope to have
experienced a certain kind of truth about Athens, specific to my interpretations of that time and space
which may speak to broader themes of art, politics, and the individual in Greece.


Conclusion
Though the research on this topic represents only a four week study, it is both intensive in terms
of information collection and as an educational experience for myself. Though I humbly do not expect
my research to break new boundaries in anthropological understanding, I recognize that I am still
working with people and by virtue of that, I have a commitment to both ethics and productivity in
sharing stories.