The subjective experience of abrupt and pervasive social changes: living through the 2008 socioeconomic crisis in Greece and Italy

Abstract

The study sought to cast light on the conceptual 'black box' of the experiential interpretations and their enacted complex psychosocial processes in acknowledged unstable macro-changing social environments precipitated by dramatic social changes that potentially bear traumatic elements. The research contributes to knowledge by providing empirical evidence of qualitative aspects in the experiential cultural construction of a painful and potentially traumatic event in relative settings, joining the objective reality of social trauma to the subjective perception of participants as members of a specific social group. The work targeted the subjective experience, aiming to explore the perceived implications on the self's well-being, the possible mutations in identity and agency under threat, and the self's ability to enact coping mechanisms in societies that have outlived a series of abrupt and pervasive social changes embedded in a socio-economic crisis. Seeking a new perspective to link subjective experience to objective social reality through empirical qualitative research towards a psychology of social change, the study employed an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on sociological research on social and cultural trauma (Alexander et al., 2004) and on sociopsychological work performed in the emerging field of psychology of social change (de la Sablonnière, 2017). The study endeavoured to elicit the subjective social experience by recruiting participants in two Eurozone countries undergoing the 2008 financial crisis, Greece and Italy, employing a comparative methodological approach of two samples comprising 25 participants from each country. The semi-structured interviews were processed through a thematic analysis, producing findings and discussions for each sample separately. A concluding chapter encompassed the comparative analysis across samples, exploring possible differences in the participants' subjective experiential interpretations of the crisis. Analysis elicited that the participants' subjective sociopsychological experiences across samples in the context of the economic crisis were congruent with the respective countries' objective macro socioeconomic indices, illustrative of bankruptcy and harsh austerity in the Greek case, in contrast to a financial recession for Italy. As such, findings revealed significant qualitative differences in the subjective social experiences of the same event between the two samples' interpretations since participants attributed different importance to the perceived magnitude and intensity of the crisis, depending on each country's prevailing historical and socio-political contextual conditions. Consequently, the Greek sample perceived the crisis of a humanitarian and socio-cultural nature with potentially traumatic elements, whereas Italian participants experienced the event as a crunch of stressful, unpleasant, albeit not overthrowing, chained economic changes without traumatic stressors. Contrary to the Italian sample, battered Greek participants' interpretations bolstered the presence of traumatic elements in their insight of the crisis as a series of abrupt external events. The latter were experienced as violent, profound and comprehensive systemic transformations under overwhelming economic conditions that dramatically altered, disrupted and jeopardised participants’ socio-normative equilibrium with a complete breakdown without allowing them any time and space to assimilate the changes and adapt. Such perceptions unbolted overwhelming emotions of hopelessness and helplessness, fuelled by feelings of collective humiliation, shame, and unworthiness. This triggered a spiral of significant existential resonances and shattering effects on Greek participants' agency, identity and well-being, constraining them to live in a lingering agonising state of economic, psychosocial and cultural degradation, threatening their ontological security.