Recuperative modes of action: Reciprocity, dependence and resistance to austerity policies in Rural Portugal

Abstract

This chapter explores the day-to-day negotiations of precarity and reactions to ‘austerity’ in a village located in the district of Portalegre, southern Portugal. Research presented here is grounded in ethnography carried out in the village during 2012 and 2013. Taking insights from the daily life of my informants as the focal point of my research, I gathered several voices to describe the effects of the financial crisis and the resulting austerity policies in rural areas. As the collected data shows, practices of reciprocity emerged and were reinvigorated to cope with economic constraints and unexpected vulnerabilities. During the Troika years, the social strategies residents engaged in to fix their lives and their budgets increased reciprocal practices, and hence, reconfigured local relational dynamics in multiple ways, for instance by intensifying the circulation and exchange of some items – money, food and favours.