Household and small-scale rural enterprises in the southern European periphery: A case-study from Peonia, Greece

Since the mid-1970s a number of rural areas on the periphery of Southern Europe have undergone rapid economic growth and structural transformation. They appeared to be following the earlier and much celebrated experience of the Third Italy. The major form of industrial organisation which emerged in these regions was the small ‘flexible’ firm, and this was widely regarded as an alternative to the Taylor-Fordist paradigm which lay at the heart of the industrialisation process of the more favoured regions, both within Southern Europe and beyond. However, almost from the outset, the idea that Flexible Specialisation presents an allembracing, coherent robust organisational model was controversial. Several important disputes concerning the precise meaning of the term and the causes, processes and its prospects arose. Most attention was directed to Iberia, and Greece has only attracted a very limited degree of scholarly interest – despite its earlier accession to the EC. Our study, which is based upon primary data obtained through extensive fieldwork investigation, focuses upon a particular county (eparkhia) – that of Peonia (located in Macedonia) which, we argue, exemplifies rural industrialisation. The recent history of the county illustrates a complex articulation of exogenous and local factors in generating growth. Driven by the remarkable expansion of garment manufacturing since 1978, Peonia was characterised by what we call a cost paring and cost evading regime; a feature depressingly common to sweatshop garment producers the world over. Rather than suggesting the emergence of a brave new era of Flexible Specialisation, the case of Peonia is more akin to that of an ‘informal’ or ‘underground’ economy facing a highly uncertain future