Expropriation and Extended Citizenship: The peripheralisation o Arcadia

Abstract

How do “peripheries” form? And how does urbanisation generate processes of peripheralisation? This paper argues that peripheralisation is not a static spatial condition but emerges as a dynamic process that is shaped by uneven urbanisation and complex multi-scalar relations. It examines how process of extended urbanisation entangle with processes of peripheralisation, and how the production of such territories is often put forward through moments of economic, ecological or health crisis, which often reinforce processes of extended urbanisation and peripheralisation. Drawing upon archival and
ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the landscapes of Mount Mainalo between 2017 and 2021, I revisit the mythicised region of Arcadia, a mountainous landscape located at the core of the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece. Contemporary Arcadia is a place where extended urbanisation is unfolding under a rural and bucolic backdrop, where idyllic images cloak social struggles and dispossessions, and recent economic and environmental crises are accelerating the deregulation and depopulation of peripheral areas. In Arcadia, land expropriations and the enclosure of commons and agricultural land are silently unfolding under the pretext of green development and energy transition, while a consistent policy of emptying and flattening the mountain region has been enabling regional re-articulations and the redistribution of power and wealth, allowing processes of capital to proceed. In the peripheral landscapes of Arcadia, extended urbanisation is paving the path for a multitude of dispossessions to occur, while alternative portraits of extended citizenship have emerged to resist and claim the right to peripheral lands. This is a tale of peripheralisation.