Drawing upon archival and ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the landscapes of Mount Mainalo between 2017 and 2021, this paper revisits the mythicized region of Arcadia, a mountainous landscape located at the core of the Peloponnese peninsula in Greece. Contemporary Arcadia is a place where extended urbanization 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. In this peripheral landscape, extended urbanization is paving the path for a multitude of dispossessions to occur, while alternative efforts to create a form of extended citizenship have emerged to resist and claim the right to peripheral lands.
Expropriation and Extended Citizenship: The peripheralization of Arcadia