DOI: 10.17903/fk2/5krefs
title: The transformation of a city: Procedures, mechanisms and manifestations of change in the identity of Volos during the 50's

description: The present research concerns the recording-composition of the social history of the city of Volos immediately after the Second World War, during the post-war years and in general in the 1950s in the direction of investigating and recording the change of its identity, based on historical sources. , the type and testimonies of individuals-subjects. It essentially concerns the description of the process of reconstruction of the new image of the city, the description of the process and the degree of change of the individuals-subjects. More specifically, it aims to: a. to investigate the processes and mechanisms that describe any change and the manifestations of changes in the level of identities - the identities of both persons and the city - in relation to those in the immediately preceding period of the Occupation and the Civil War, but also in general past of the city. b. to explore and describe the logic with which social relations were formed and mediated at different levels of social life c. to delve beyond the archival sources into new parameters-reasoning with the help of oral testimonies, attempting to reconstruct the space and time of experiences / events d. the "return" of the results to the community, through the production of material, the presentation of research data as well as the creation and implementation of educational material related to the social history of the city in classrooms As the research is in progress, the "dialogue" with the archival sources, the evidence and the informants is continuous and open and the topics are constantly enriched and concretized at the same time. In this context, described earlier, the main research axes of the research are established and articulated, integrated in the discussion of the historical and social sciences on the way in which the social is constructed. The main research areas concern: • The investigation of the situation in which the city was - and the wider region of Magnesia - immediately after the Civil War, a period of fluidity and peculiarity throughout Europe, as it has been recorded in historical documents, in the collective memory, but also in the memory of the subjects . • The content that individuals gave to their identity in the specific socio-political environment and the way in which this identity was related or different from the one they had in the immediately preceding period of the Occupation and the Civil War. • The description of the logic with which social relations were formed and mediated, their form-structure and content, based on the fact that in the previous period significant social reorganizations had taken place and individuals or groups were retreating or claiming space in the public sphere. • The detection of the character, type and targeting of social groups (political or party formations, electoral combinations, associations, unions, small groups in neighborhoods or neighborhoods, local groups of some nationwide or global organizations) formed by individuals specific period and the way in which the concept of social was expressed through them. • Examining the way in which state power was exercised. What were its manifestations and what public performances constituted its official social "face", as well as the results of the exercise or enforcement, the obvious but also the less obvious. • What were the events that ultimately determined the change in the specific period of time in the study area. How will the concept of "event" be defined through its comparison with the concept of "disaster" - the natural catastrophic event that afflicts a population in a state of vulnerability - for all economic, social, collective, personal events in the post-civil war period and as in the late 1950s. • How is the identity of the city described at that time, in relation to the wider political and social context, but also later and how is it described today, through the successive and possibly different, self-perceptions of historical subjects, in an attempt to answer the question, whether there was a change for the city, as well as its type and degree.