The austerity crisis has radically altered the economic landscape of Southern Europe. But alongside the decimation of public services and infrastructure lies the wreckage of a generation's visions for the future. In Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal, there is a new, difficult reality of downward mobility.

Grassroots Economies interrogates the effects of the economic crisis on the livelihood of working people, providing insight into their anxieties. Drawing on a rich seam of ethnographic material, it is a distinctive comparative analysis that explores the contradictions of their coping mechanisms and support structures.

With a focus on gender, the book explores values and ideologies, including dispossession and accumulation. Ultimately it demonstrates that everyday interactions on the local scale provide a significant sense of the global.

1. Introduction: Grassroots economies in southern Europe and beyond - Susana Narotzky (University of Barcelona, Spain)
Part I: Making a Living
2. Bondage unemployment and intra-class tensions in Greek energy restructuring - Theodora Vetta (École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, France)
3. Work, wage and subsidy: Making a living between regulation and informalization - Antonio Maria Pusceddu (University of Barcelona, Spain)
4. Criminalizing the means of livelihood: “Illegal vegetables” and the return to the home - Carmen Leidereiter (Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research, Netherlands)
5. Austerity, social values and value: The social economy and entrepreneurship in Catalonia - Patricia Homs (University of Barcelona, Spain)
Part II: Social Reproduction
6. Austerity welfare and the moral significance of needs in Portugal - Patricia Matos (New University of Lisbon, Portugal)
7. Family, housing as an asset, and the production of welfare - Jaime Palomera (University of Barcelona, Spain)
8. Social reproduction in times of crisis: Tensions between generations in Southern Europe - Susana Narotzky (University of Barcelona, Spain) and Antonio Maria Pusceddu (University of Barcelona, Spain)
Part III: Experiencing and Embodying Austerity
9. The Entrepreneur’s Other: Small entrepreneurial identity and the collapse of life structures in the “Third Italy” - Giacomo Loperfido (University of Barcelona, Spain)
10. The body politics of austerity in Portugal and Spain: Women, dispossession and agency - Diana Sarkis and Patricia Matos 
11. Austerity from below: Class, temporality and scale in grassroots explanations of crisis - Diana Sarkis Fernandez (University of Barcelona, Spain) and Stamatis Amarianakis (University of Barcelona, Spain)