Dear Marilena,

there are two questions in your statement, with a similar but - in my opinion - different focus. Your both questions are challinging and important, because they affect basic questions like: "What kind of society do you / do we want to live in? and: What's your / our contribution for this idea of society?

So, at first, I try to work out a statement for your first question: "Is it possible to have a strong civil society during a severe economic crisis with high levels of poverty and social exclusion?"

In my opinion, a strong civil society can be recognised in the extent of perceptible actions in the indication of social responsibility, social cohesion or solidarity. If you want to know the extent of these social oriented values within a society, you have to measure these values within a society representatively. There are two databases, that you perhaps can use for your special interest:

1. European Social Survey:  http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/        

I assume, you are interested in "human values" and "welfare attitudes".See: http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data/module-index.html                               (You can carry out correlation and regression analysis as registered user.)

2. World Values Survey: http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp                      You can carry out online analyses under:

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSOnline.jsp

(but not for Greece; I was astonished, not finding this country.)

So, my idea is to measure social-oriented values and to compare these values with the economic conditions of the citizens. At the university of Bielefeld, Heitmeyer et al could illustrate, that social desintegration (as feeling) lead to social retreat (and furthermore to a reduction of social-oriented values). See: http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/%28en%29/ikg/projekte/GMF/SozialeDesintegration.html

But there's the phenomena, that there's more solidarity to support needy people within the poor population groups. See:                                           http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/%28en%29/ikg/projekte/GMF/Ergebnisse.html

So, I personally judge it pessimistically, that there's is a great chance of a strong civil society during a severe economic crisis with high levels of poverty and social exclusion. However, it isn't impossible, if there are many persons, to whom social-oriented values are important, because they don't want to live in a society, where are values like excessive competition / contest, truncated economism or selfish egoism the leading values.

This leads to your second question: "Is an increase in civil society's density a sign of a stronger civil society?" In my opinion the "multiplication of many informal grassroots initiatives, providing social services and goods," is a sign, that there are population groups, to whom social-oriented values are important, but, I assume,this is not indicative of a stronger civil society, unless these population groups would represent the majority of the population (and I assume, this isn't the case).

Good luck with your research project and kind regards, Detlef

http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/

http://www.europeansocialsurvey.org/data/module-index.html

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp

http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSOnline.jsp

http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/%28en%29/ikg/projekte/GMF/SozialeDesintegration.html

http://www.uni-bielefeld.de/%28en%29/ikg/projekte/GMF/Ergebnisse.html

From reading your question, the issue you are exploring is more one a change in civil society regulation rather than there being a change in levels of civic initiatives. 

Whether grass roots organisation represents a better, or stronger, form of civic-ness than, say state funded social services, is an entirely subjective issue. Neither is meaningful comparison possible due to factors such as the diffuse nature of informal iniatives, which come and go and have variable coverage and impact.

A shorter answer is that this project that needs a qualitative dimension. 

BTW. I don't know if this problem affects Greece, but one of the victims of austerity has been social research, which means less data on this kind of issue.

Dear Marilena,

In the case of Greece - a country that was never able to build a strong political community as Castoriadis once said, - an increase in civil society's density (or social solidarity, which is what you are referring to with this concept) is definitely a precondition for a stronger civil society. The problem, as you know, is that there is no clear separation between "civil society" and the "state" (including actors in government of course): you need very strong institutions to protect "civil society" from the destructive forces of the "market" (or capitalism, and whatever goes with it in specific contexts: neo-mercantilist policies [in Germany], broad national and international corruption, clientelism, etc). Right now, the structural conditions for the emergence of a strong civil society in Greece are not there, given the wider balance of forces in Europe. But let's wait and see: Europe is now confronted to the POLITICAL consequences of their obsessive and devastating austerity policies (Marine Le Pen in France, UKIP in the UK, Podemos in Spain, Sinn Féin in Ireland etc.). Are the EU  elites going to be able to contain the rising tensions and protests? How are the latter going to translate? Greece is a small country. She cannot succeed all alone in her fight. The election of her new government is only the first tangible sign announcing future changes - changes for the best or the worst, depending among other important factors on how future elections turn out elsewhere and what margins of manoeuvre Greece will be able to generate in negociations with the "institutions". So you really need an approach that is both sociological and political to analyze your problem.

I suggest that a more valuable (or at least supplemental) exploration might involve taking out the Yes/No and changing the focus of the inquiry.  How might a strong civil society have prevented or ameliorated Greece's bubble economy in the first place?  One of Tsipras' main arguments, as I understand it, is that the Greek people were not adequately represented in the bubble, in the bailout of the banks that made bad loans, or in the brutal austerity put in place to pay for this bailout.  

I would also suggest making sure that you address Polanyi and spontaneous social movement response to economic dislocation.

In addition to the point that Nicholas makes above regarding Polanyi, you might find it useful to employ his ideas in conjunction with Gramsci's. Michael Burawoy wrote a very interesting paper in 2003 called "For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi" and they seem to complement each others conceptual and theoretical weaknesses (and strengths) well. There has been some work employing Polanyi's ideas to the Greek context but I can't locate the paper just now. Best of luck!

Found it! This paper was presented at the EMES conference in (I think) 2009 so predates the most recent events obviously. 

http://www.euricse.eu/sites/euricse.eu/files/db_uploads/documents/1254747904_n155.pdf

Marilena I recommend you read Vasiliki Kantzara's paper on the Greek crisis:  "Solidarity in times of Crisis: emergent  Practices and Potential for Paradigmatic Change. Notes from Greece. It's in Academia.edu (I have attached it).

Very interesting all contributions . I think a look at historical moments of profound change can help. For example, in the Spain of the transition strength of associations was reduced when much of the same leaders became part of the political institutions . You have to visualize what the structure of autonomous participation proposed by the new government, and the strategies of the citizen to keep their protest movement against representatives character arising from their own bases

I would approach this subject from a more existential perspective, specifically from a terror management perspective.  It is one of the only perspectives that explains the recent rise of fascism in both Greece and Hungary during current economic hardships.

If you can find it, this would probably be a decent resource:

http://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=hwV1P2oKliMC&oi=fnd&pg=PA210&dq=terror+management+fascism&ots=a2SrB4vde6&sig=575Kfw2gk7PLAEk_6pdjItmPBnY#v=onepage&q=terror%20management%20fascism&f=false