Theodoros Rakopoulos

PUBLICATIONS

Books

2023. Passport island: The market for EU citizenship in Cyprus. Manchester University Press. 

   "makes critically important contributions to debates on the relationship between global and national citizenship, and between capitalism and the state", American Ethnologist 

2019. Towards an anthropology of wealth: Imagination, substance, value. Routledge. (Editor, with Knut Rio). 

2018. The global life of austerity: Comparing beyond Europe. Oxford and NY: Berghahn. (Editor).

2017. From clans to co-ops: Confiscated mafia land in Sicily. Oxford and NY: Berghahn.

   "even manages to de-essentialize the mafia through his discussion of specific low- and mid-level operators", American Anthropologist

    In Italian: 2023. Coltivare la legalità: Mafia e antimafia nelle terre confiscate in Sicilia. Milan: Meltemi. 

Special issues and special sections

2019. Co-editor (with Theodore Powers). The anthropology of austerity: People, history, continuity. Focaal 83.

2018. Co-editor (with Knut Rio). Reimagining wealth: Anthropological explorations. History & Anthropology 29(3). 

2016. Co-editor (with Heath Cabot). The other side of crisis: Solidarity networks in Greece. Social Anthropology 24(2). 

Refereed journal articles 

2025. Cthulhu Anthropology: H.P. Lovecraft and the discipline of difference. Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology.

2025. Nationalism(s), island version: Vernacular languages of statehood in conflict. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 43: 25-44. 

2022. Property as sovereignty in micro: The state/property nexus and the Cyprus Problem. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 28(3): 769-787. 

2022. The golden passport 'Russian' EUtopia: Offshore citizens in a global Republic. Social Anthropology, 30(2): 161-178. 

2022. Of fascists and dreamers: Conspiracy theory and Anthropology. Social Anthropology 30(1): 45-62.

2022. On divisionism and cypriotism: The civic languages of the Cyprus Problem. LSE GreeSE papers, Paper No. 170.

2020. The shared boundary: Sicilian mafia and antimafia land. Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 25(5): 528–544.

2020. Two kinds of Mafia dependency: On making and unmaking mafia men. Social Anthropology, 28(3): 686-699. 

2020. Cooperatives. In: The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology (edited by Felix Stein). 

2019. The anthropology of austerity: an introduction. Focaal 83: 1-12. (Co-authored with Theodore Powers). 

2019. Afterword. Reversing the world: What austerity does to time and place. Focaal 83: 67-71.  

2019. Who we speak with: Gossip as metatalk in a mafia and antimafia universe. Annuale Voci XVI: 89-105.

2018. The social life of mafia confession: Between talk and silence in Sicily. Current Anthropology 59(2): 167-190. 

2018. Introduction to an anthropology of wealth. History and Anthropology 29(3): 1-17. (Co-authored with Knut Rio, open access).

2018. Show me the money: Conspiracy theories and distant wealth. History and Anthropology 29(3): 376-391. 

2018. Solidarity bridges: Alternative food economies in urban Greece. The Greek Review of Social Research 149(B): 1-21.

2017. Façade egalitarianism: Mafia and cooperative in Sicily. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review 40(1): 104-121. 

2017. Antimafia families: Cooperative work and flexible kinship in Sicily. Critique of Anthropology 36(2): 115-131. 

2016. Solidarity: The egalitarian tensions of a bridge-concept. Introduction to the special issue “The other side of crisis: Solidarity networks in Greece”, eds. Cabot, H. and T. Rakopoulos. Social Anthropology 24(2): 142-151.

2015. Solidarity's tensions: Informality and sociality in the Greek crisis. Social Analysis 59(3): 85-104.

2015. Which community for cooperatives: Peasant mobilisations, Mafia and the problem of community participation in Sicilian co-ops. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 71: 57-80.

2014. Cooperative modulations: The antimafia movement and struggles over land and cooperativism in eight Sicilian municipalities. Journal of Modern Italian Studies 19(1): 15-33.

2014 The crisis seen from below, within and against: From solidarity economy to food distribution cooperatives in Greece. Dialectical Anthropology 38: 189-207.

2014. Resonance of solidarity: Anti-middleman food distribution in anti-austerity Greece. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 32(2): 95-119.

2013. Responding to the crisis: Food cooperatives and the solidarity economy in Greece. Anthropology Southern Africa 36(3&4): 102-107.

Book chapters

2026. Thinking with interfaces: Mediterranean islands as sites of peripheral reasoning. In: The Routledge Handbook of Peripheries in European Studies, edited by Pamella Ballinger and Clemens Sedmak.

2024. Anti-Mafia, unscripted: On discourse, moral borders and the public space. In: "New anthropologies of Italy: Politics, history and culture". Edited by Paolo Heywood. Oxford and NY: Berghahn, 198-218. 

2020. Notes on the 500 Euro: On mafias, precarity, and analytical priorities. In: "Who's cashing in?: Contemporary perspectives on new money and global cashlenessness" . Edited by Atreyee Sen, Johan Lindquist, and Marie Kolling. Oxford and NY: Berghahn, 131-142. 

2019. 70% Zapatista?: Solidarity 'ecosystems' and the troubles of valuing labor in food cooperatives. In: Food Values in Europe. Edited by Krista Harper and Siniscalchi, Valeria. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 147-162.

2018. Introduction: Austerity, measured. In The Global Life of Austerity. Edited by Theodoros Rakopoulos. London and New York: Berghahn. Critical Interventions series, pp 1-16.

2018. The future of Solidarity: Food cooperativism as labour. In: Critical Times in Greece: Anthropological engagements with the crisis. Edited by Dimitris Dalakoglou and Agelopoulos, Giorgos. London: Routledge, pp. 202-217. 

2015. On Blasphemy: The paradoxes of mocking and protecting God. In The Event of Charlie Hebdo: Imaginaries of freedom and control. Edited by Alessandro Zagato. Oxford and New York: Critical Interventions, Berghahn, pp. 83-92.

2015. The solidarity economy in the Greek crisis: Movementality, economic democracy and social reproduction. In 'Economy for and against Democracy'. Edited by Keith Hart. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, pp. 161-181.

2013. Food activism and antimafia cooperatives in contemporary Sicily. In 'Food Activism: Agency, Democracy and Economy'. Edited by Valeria Siniscalchi and Counihan, Caroline. London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 123-42.

Essays, review essays, and comments (selected)

2025. Signe Howell, legacy of a cosmos visited. Ethnologia Europaea, 55(1).

2025. Er antropologi (fortsatt) en humanistisk disiplin? Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift, 36(1-2). 

2023. What's in a notion? Comment on Amalia Sa'ar's article on Economic citizenship, Current Anthropology 64(1).

2020. In Cyprus, the golden passports scheme shows us how capitalism and corruption go hand in hand. Jacobin 

2019. Self in and with the world: On Keith Hart's memoir. Sociologia e Antropologia 9(3): 1019-1025. 

2016. On crisis and resistance: Exception, neoliberalism and two voices in the Left. Review essay. Social Analysis 60(1): 133-141.

2016. The poetics of diaspora: Greek US voices. Review essay. Journal of Modern Greek Studies 34(1): 159-165. 

2016. The “anti-middleman” informal cooperatives of Greece. Global Dialogue: Newsletter for the international Sociological Association, 6(1).

2015. Solidarity, ethnography and the de-instituting of dissent. Occasional Papers, 6. Journal of Modern Greek Studies. 

Refereed articles in languages other than English (selected)

2021. The Republic of property (Or, when citizenship is for sale): Golden passports and political community in Cyprus. Sychrona Themata, 150: 103-115. (In Greek).

2020. Two Lefts: Communist parties, the Cyprus problem and deep historical changes. History, memory and culture in post-war Greece, Municipality of Pireaus. (In Greek).

2017. “Approaching” Sorras: “Conspiracy theories” and the social sciences. Sychrona Themata 136: 24-27. (In Greek).

2015. Responses to crisis: Food cooperativism in Greece. Mosim and Salim 6: 74-93. (In Korean).

2015. Grecia: Al de la de la excepcion y entras solidaridad. Abaco, 83/84: 114-120. (In Spanish).

2014. The informal solidarity economy in the hidden welfare of the crisis. Sychrona Themata 124: 16-24. (In Greek).

2012. The land as a right: community, confiscations and neighbourliness in the case of the ‘antimafia cooperatives’ of Sicily. Sychrona Themata 116: 41-50. (In Greek).

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2025). Cthulhu Anthropology: H.P. Lovecraft and the Discipline of Difference. Ethnos. ISSN 0014-1844. p. 15–15. doi: 10.1080/00141844.2025.2509688. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  H.P. Lovecraft’s work is more popular than ever, while the author is simultaneously under intense scrutiny for his racist worldview. This paper suggests a twofold anthropological revisiting of Lovecraft: firstly, it traces his engagement with difference and ‘scientific’ knowledge. Secondly, it reviews the author’s kinship with anthropological thinking and his position within a genealogy of thought, to assess his ‘cosmicism’ worldview. It argues that Lovecraft’s awareness of anthropological thinking, as well as his scientific rigour, allow us to see his fascination with difference, alterity, and monstrosity in a productive fashion. Viewing the author as a parallel anthropologist, the piece suggests that the Lovecraftian worldview offers a cosmos of radical difference and the potential for a comparative approach, of vital importance to critical thinking today. Thinking about anthropologies found in literature, the paper offers a counterpoint to current discussions within the discipline on literary; ways to do anthropology.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2025). Nationalism(s), Island Version: Vernacular Languages of Statehood in Conflict. Journal of Modern Greek Studies. ISSN 0738-1727. 43(1), p. 25–44. doi: 10.1353/mgs.2025.a957853. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Clashes between ethnic and civic nationalism are not the turf of high politics but everyday currency in the formation of the citizenry's relation to the state in postcolonial communities. A focus on the hyphen (-) in the nation-state nexus works to unpack how vernacular forms of nationalism take shape in a post-conflict, postcolonial polity. In Cyprus, two opposed vernaculars are used by the Greek-speaking population to engage with statehood and thus with the Cyprus Problem. Certain Greek-Cypriots adhere to a non-nation-bound loyalty, κυπριωτισμός (cypriotism), that supports the state's bicommunal nature. Sociohistorical formations have informed a conceptual distance between nation and state, a condition nurturing everyday vernaculars of civic belonging. Among other Greek-Cypriots, ethnonationalist rhetoric operates in favor of divisionism. The Cyprus case contributes to an understanding of the political vernacular in postcolonial contexts by highlighting from below the local "languages" that underpin post-conflict statehood.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2022). Property as sovereignty in micro: The state/property nexus and the Cyprus Problem. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. ISSN 1359-0987. 28(3), p. 769–787. doi: 10.1111/1467-9655.13763. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article shows that landed property can be an exercise of state sovereignty in micro. I argue that property tightly relates to statehood and that the concept of ‘community’ offers us a lens with which to investigate that relation. Property's ‘communal’ character in Cyprus often transcends individual rights to ownership. A house belongs not to an individual, but to persons in their capacity as members of either the Greek-Cypriot or Turkish-Cypriot constitutional communities of the Republic. Focusing on the moral and political claims that ensue from this premise, I show how refugee Cypriots encounter and rearticulate the state in a variety of institutions as they lay claims to property (periousia) – their own or others’. Consequently, I argue that thinking through ‘community’ contributes to understandings of the linkage between property and statecraft (what I call the state/property nexus). In turn, this allows us to better comprehend statehood in post-conflict domains.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2022). The Golden Passport ‘Russian’ EUtopia Offshore Citizens in a Global Republic. Social Anthropology. ISSN 0964-0282. 30(2), p. 161–178. doi: 10.3167/saas.2022.300210. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In the face of utopian discussions on global citizenship and cosmopolitan identities, this article argues that the concept of offshoring provides insights into rising realities in elite mobility and the formation of expat communities. I do this in the context of the proliferation of ‘golden passport programmes’, through which rich people are naturalised as citizens in the countries where they invest. Showing how the global citizenship utopia is materialised locally, I argue that golden passports are the continuation of offshoring by other means. Presenting an ethnographic portraiture of those enabling Russians to acquire the Cypriot passport, as well as how the Russophone community takes shape locally in Cyprus, the article shows how ‘expat communities’ can form as enclaves of safety that offer offshore convenience for certain elite community members. It also shows that golden passports exacerbate local inequality, undermining the egalitarian utopia of citizenship at large, with detrimental effects on the local sense of civitas.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2022). Of fascists and dreamers: Conspiracy theory and Anthropology. Social Anthropology. ISSN 0964-0282. 30(1), p. 45–62. doi: 10.3167/saas.2022.300104. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Examining conspiracy theory authors has not been seen as worthy of ethnographic inquiry in anthropology as of yet. This is intriguing, as encountering conspiracy theorists inspires a process of reassessing the critical nature of our own discipline, with its doubting mechanisms and thrill for alternative realities, and the essay offers analogies between such theories and the discipline. This article tackles conspiracy theory through ethnographically encountering the people largely responsible for the creation and dissemination of such theories. I argue that ethnography of conspiracy theory is ethnography on and with conspiracy theorists. The essay responds to recent calls to address uncomfortable ideas ‘at eye level’. Such calls to take seriously people who adhere to challenging ideas comes from work among far-right thinkers, an area sometimes converging with conspiracy theory. Reviewing material from fieldwork in Greece among authors in the conspiracy genre illuminates a wide array of concerns, from the idea that their work is science-worthy to statements both associated and dissociated from fascist ideas. The essay shows how professionals of the conspiracy theory field craft such theories and (re)work their own social standing, while I take conspiracy theory arbiters’ claims to the epistemic seriously and explore their relations to the far-right.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros; Kunz, Sarah & Osburg, John (2022). Migration and the global middle class. Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics. 8(2), p. 229–234. doi: 10.17356/ieejsp.v8i2.1065. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The final panel considered whether it was productive to approach migration from the perspective of a global middle class, a concept first advanced by economists in the early 2000s (Milanovic & Yitzhaki, 2002). While they defined it in quantitative terms, does such a class carry distinctive qualitative traits or a shared identity or set of values that apply across borders? Do we see evidence for the theory that ‘postmaterial’ values are becoming global as middle-class lifestyle spread (Inglehart, 2018), and how does this relate to migration? Can it be linked to particular temporal (present-oriented) and spatial (downscaling) aspirations? How does migration both reflect and constitute social stratification? Does the migrant middle class develop new class sensitivities that could be critical of sending-country class structures or are class identities transplanted seamlessly? If there is a global middle class, does it reconfigure global racial hierarchies?

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2021). The Republic of property (Or, when citizenship is for sale): Golden passports and political community in Cyprus. Sychrona Themata. ISSN 1105-431X. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2020). For David Graeber. Anthropological Journal on European Cultures. ISSN 1755-2923. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2020). Cooperatives. Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology. doi: 10.29164/20coops. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Cooperatives are a main means of organization for economic activity, generally operating on principles of equal membership and members’ democratic control of their means of livelihood. Co-ops have developed as modern institutions aiming to tackle problems created by contemporary capitalism and its associated dependency on wage work. Co-ops operate and interact in context, mobilising ways of human contact that anthropologists usually study (kinship, community, ethnicity, and local belief systems). Anthropologists have expressed interest in co-ops since the origins of their discipline. They tend to investigate the ways that members interact within co-op organizations, as well as the ways co-ops interact with and within broader social frameworks. Key issues arising in understanding cooperatives are how co-ops negotiate industrial democracy, how they respond to market influences, and how they interrelate with broader civil society and social movements. Anthropological critiques of cooperatives distinguish between cooperative ideology and praxis, and highlight cases where institutional cooperation does not work in favour of local communities. However, anthropologists have equally celebrated cooperatives as institutional forms that shield communities off from exploitation and promote social solidarity.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2020). The Return of the Horkatoi (and of a Sociology of Class). The Cyprus Review - A Journal of Social, Economic and Political Issues. ISSN 1015-2881. 31(1), p. 99–103. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2020). The shared boundary: Sicilian mafia and antimafia land. Journal of Modern Italian Studies. ISSN 1354-571X. 25(5), p. 528–544. doi: 10.1080/1354571X.2020.1830526. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article looks at boundaries as shared points of conflict and sociality in rural Sicily where the mafia and their opponents (‘antimafia’ cooperatives) have lately been at loggerheads. My focus is on neighbourly relations between owners of plots on both sides. This uncomfortable proximity of enemies allows us to see boundaries as more than markers of separation. For sure, Sicilian boundaries imprint a history of violence on the landscape and divide people along categorical lines. However, they also reflect histories of inheritance and kinship, while providing points of contact and an unexpected moral order of neighbourhood relations. A focus on borders shared between plots managed by ‘antagonistic’ social groups exposes emergent relations of conflict and solidarity between their owners. Land boundaries can be markers of proximity and difference between opposed groups who find themselves owning plots next to each other. The boundary underpinning such divisions can make neighbours of feuding groups, rather than confining them to closed clusters.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2020). Two kinds of mafia dependency: on making and unmaking mafia men. Social Anthropology. ISSN 0964-0282. 28(3), p. 686–699. doi: 10.1111/1469-8676.12921. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article proposes a movement between two sorts of dependency in the secretive bonds of violent men. The first forges an interdependent set of relations between mafia men, independent of the state; the second arises as a dependency of these former mafiosi on the state in order to break the interdependencies that formerly made them as mafia men. In this ethnographic and oral history narrative, we first witness a dyadic, homosocial relation between two violent men that forges a masculinised interdependence binding the protagonists of this story together as they share a secret. We then encounter the break‐up of this interdependency amid local moral outrage over betrayal and violence, and its substitution by a strong dependence on the state. Through a microsociology that delves into a history of relations, the article thus shows how the subjects of this story shift from one set of dependencies to another. The essay critically revisits discussions of dependency, especially on the state, underscoring the missing element of dependency in the making and breaking of bonds in a secretive male brotherhood.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). The anthropology of austerity:An introduction. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology. ISSN 0920-1297. 83, p. 1–12. doi: 10.3167/fcl.2019.830101. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). 70% Zapatista?: Solidarity 'ecosystems' and the troubles of valuing labor in food cooperatives. In Harper, Krista (Eds.), Food Values in Europe. Bloomsbury Academic. ISSN 9781350084773. p. 147–162. doi: 10.5040/9781350084803.0018. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). Afterword reversing the world?what austerity does to time and place. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology. ISSN 0920-1297. 2019(83), p. 67–71. doi: 10.3167/fcl.2019.830107. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). Who we speak with: Gossip as metatalk in a mafia and antimafia universe. Voci. ISSN 1827-5095. XVI, p. 89–105. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). The social life of mafia confession: Between talk and silence in sicily. Current Anthropology. ISSN 0011-3204. 59(2), p. 167–191. doi: 10.1086/697237. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Exploring Sicilian secular confessions, this essay discusses anthropological impasses on talk and silence. Such dilemmas reveal ethnographic frailties in engaging with concealment and revealing. The delicacy of negotiating between those demanding silence (the mafia) and those demanding self-revelation (the antimafia activists) unsettles the fieldwork ethics of our own anthropological entanglement in the gray areas of fieldwork between silence and talk. I show that pentiti (mafia confessants) blur the area between mafia and antimafia, allowing people to navigate across institutional categories. What is more, the essay embeds Sicilian confession in an intellectual genealogy, comparing mafia confession with its Christian counterpart and with bureaucratic theodicy. The move of confessional material of mafiosi and ordinary Sicilians from a private exchange to the public sphere recalls comparisons with religious ritual. While acknowledging the effects of confession on the mafia person, akin to the religious experience as a path to change and a new self, the essay suggests that secular confession should be approached through the lens of its effects on the lives of others. Its secularism is not imbued in an institution as much as it is invested in the life trajectories it inspires, often in the face of punishment.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). Solidarity bridges: Alternative food economies in urban Greece. Greek Review of Social Research. ISSN 0013-9696. 149(B), p. 1–21. doi: 10.12681/grsr.15818. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Set in the urban-rural continuum of Thessaloniki, this paper explores the grounded social activities of certain groups, committed to building a social economy of distributing food without intermediaries. In the light of new ethnographic data from grassroots responses to livelihoods’ hardship, I propose to expand reciprocity's conceptual boundaries, extended to include a local concept rampant in crisis-ridden Greece: solidarity. The solidarity economy can be seen as a conceptual and political bridge that symbolically as well as materially brings together communities of food production and consumption. The cosmology of the horio (village) is an unexpected urban activist metonym in the food distribution systems that have emerged amidst austerity measures in Greece.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). Show me the money: Conspiracy theories and distant wealth. History and Anthropology. ISSN 0275-7206. 29(3), p. 376–391. doi: 10.1080/02757206.2018.1458723. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article explores the meanings of imagined, secret and hidden wealth that followers of conspiracy theory account for on different sides of the moral compass, as bad and good. Conspiracy theory, a strand of intellectual practice exacerbated by the recent crisis in Greece, calls for exploring hidden wealth assets, while conspiracy’s mirror-image, transparency, becomes central in the understanding of wealth in this conundrum. Through three stories, that of Artemis Sorras – a self-proclaimed trillionaire, of an anti-Semitic book and of conspiracist publishers in Greece, I examine the centrality of (un)accountable wealth in imaginations of peoples’ presents and pasts. I explore narratives of wealth in conspiracist discourse trajectories, showing how wealth can play a role in imagined allegiances and political practices. A focus on conspiracy theory allows an exegesis of how obscure narratives of wealth are shaping the ways in which people conceptualize economic crisis. Notions of accountability and secrecy are central to their (and our) understandings of wealth – and are laden with contradictions, according to diverse paths of moralizing the past. An anthropology of conspiracy theory allows scaling narratives of wealth from the microhistories of money flows to the political economy of crisis.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). Introduction: Austerity, Measured. In Rakopoulos, Theodoros (Eds.), The Global Life of Austerity:Comparing Beyond Europe. Berghahn Books. ISSN 9781785338700. p. 1–16. doi: 10.2307/j.ctvw04cvv.3. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros & Rio, Knut (2018). Reimagining Wealth: Anthropological Explorations. History and Anthropology. ISSN 0275-7206. 29(3), p. 275–406. doi: 10.1080/02757206.2018.1460600. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this special issue, we ask what meaning should be attributed to a concept of wealth. We think there are good reasons for looking closely at the concept, first of all because we are often led to believe that wealth is something to which most of us do not have access. But while people tend to think it is not within their reach, the lesson from anthropology has been that wealth is actually at the core of ordinary life and its relational reproduction, and we will argue that this insight is still important. Once we get the concept of wealth back in our analytical grasp, we can also begin to see how it is exploited and distanced by the financial world and appreciate the tensions between the various forces that pull at it.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros & Rio, Knut (2018). Introduction to an anthropology of wealth. History and Anthropology. ISSN 0275-7206. 29(3), p. 275–292. doi: 10.1080/02757206.2018.1460600. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  In this introduction, we aim to demystify the concept of wealth, too entangled in financial discourses, which have generally reduced it to ‘accumulated assets’. This is at odds with the intricate cultural history of wealth as a concept, as well as with abundant anthropological accounts, instead defining wealth as a question of reproduction, relational flows and life vitality. When we view wealth as firstly a product of relational capacities, we begin to understand the processes wherein it is constantly being pulled at from forces that demand appropriation, be that finance, community or state. We therefore outline wealth as a triangular phenomenon between capital, the commons, and power. Careful at the dynamics between such forces, we structure our analysis around the paradoxical social processes where wealth, originating in every day relationships and human reproduction, is continually exposed to claims – such as market alienation, but also ‘commoning’, or governmental state control.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2017). “Approaching” Sorras: “Conspiracy theories” and the social sciences. Sychrona Themata. ISSN 1105-431X. 136, p. 24–27. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2017). Façade Egalitarianism? Mafia and Cooperative in Sicily. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review. ISSN 1081-6976. 40(1), p. 104–121. doi: 10.1111/plar.12207. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2017). Antimafia families: Cooperative work and flexible kinship in Sicily. Critique of Anthropology. ISSN 0308-275X. 37(2), p. 115–131–131. doi: 10.1177/0308275X17694942. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2017). The Future of Solidarity: Food Cooperativism as Labour in Greece. In Dalakoglou, Dimitris & Agelopoulos, Georgios (Ed.), Critical Times in Greece:Anthropological Engagements with the Crisis. Routledge. ISSN 9781138237773. doi: 10.4324/9781315299037-15. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2017). Critical Times in Greece:Anthropological Engagements with the Crisis. In Dalakoglou, Dimitris & Agelopoulos, Georgios (Ed.), Critical Times in Greece:Anthropological Engagements with the Crisis. Routledge. ISSN 9781138237773. p. 202–217. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). Responses to Crisis: Food Cooperativism in Greece. Mosim and Salim. 6, p. 74–93. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). On Crisis and Resistance. Review essay for: “The Age of Resistance”, by C. Douzinas and “Crucible of Resistance: Greece, the Eurozone and the World Economic Crisis”, by Laskos, C. and E. Tsakalotos. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology. ISSN 0155-977X. 60(1), p. 133–141. doi: 10.3167/sa.2016.600209. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). Solidarity: The egalitarian tensions of a bridge-concept. Social Anthropology. ISSN 0964-0282. 24(2), p. 142–151. doi: 10.1111/1469-8676.12298. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). The poetics of diaspora: Greek US voices. Journal of Modern Greek Studies. ISSN 0738-1727. 34(1), p. 159–165. doi: 10.1353/mgs.2016.0000. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2015). On Blasphemy: The Paradoxes of Protecting and Mocking God. In Zagato, Alessandro (Eds.), The Event of Charlie Hebdo. Imaginaries of Freedom and Control. Berghahn Books. ISSN 9781785330759. p. 83–92. doi: 10.2307/j.ctv6zdczb.10. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2015). Solidarity’s tensions: Informality, sociality, and the greek crisis. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology. ISSN 0155-977X. 59(3), p. 85–104. doi: 10.3167/sa.2015.590305. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2015). Tensions That Matter: Informality and Sociality in the Greek Crisis’ Solidarity Economy. Social Analysis: The International Journal of Anthropology. ISSN 0155-977X. 59(2). doi: 10.3167/sa.2015.590305. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2015). Which community for cooperatives? Peasant mobilizations, the Mafia, and the problem of community participation in Sicilian co-ops. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology. ISSN 0920-1297. 2015(71), p. 57–70. doi: 10.3167/fcl.2015.710106. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The literature on cooperatives often conceptualizes cooperativism as an organized effort to embrace community participation. Through the analysis of agrarian cooperatives in Sicily that were formally established to counter the Mafia and by ethnographically exploring the notion of community for cooperativism, this article aims to problematize this idea of cooperatives as “community economics”. It proposes an anthropological approach that critically analyzes divisions of labor and the internal factions' divergent concepts of “community”. In Sicily, workers in “anti-Mafia” co-ops recognize a sense of community and “way of life” in Mafia-influenced mobilizations outside the cooperative environment, contrary to the co-op administrators' legalistic views of community. The article illuminates how the fact that often co-op members draw on different ideas of community can lead to contradictions and tensions, especially as there are different social realities underlying those ideas.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2015). Between event and ritual: the SYRIZA elections in Greece. Egalitarianism. Full text in Research Archive

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• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2023). Passport island: The market for EU citizenship in Cyprus. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9781526167361. 248 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2023). Coltivare la legalità': Mafia e antimafia nelle terre confiscate in Sicilia. Meltemi. ISBN 9788855196406. 324 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros & Rio, Knut (2019). Towards an Anthropology of Wealth: Imagination, Substance, Value. Routledge. ISBN 9780367180072. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Aiming to redefine the concept of wealth, which has too often been reduced to merely ‘accumulated assets’, this book views wealth primarily as a question of reproduction, relational flows and life vitality. The authors therefore outline wealth as a triangular phenomenon between capital, the commons and power. Viewing wealth as firstly a product of relational capacities, the book explores the processes wherein it is constantly being pulled at from forces that demand appropriation, be that finance, community or state. The chapters tackle perceptions (and practices) of wealth in the commons, in mythical narrative, immaterial substance, aristocratic orders, antimafia, money real and imagined, and conspiracy theory, with contributions from Melanesia, Italy, Greece, India and Mongolia. The comparative perspective lies at the heart of the book, bringing together instances of commonwealth and the commons, as well as hierarchical, relational and substantial understandings of wealth. As the first collection in recent decades to address the anthropology of wealth openly in a comparative perspective, this book will spark discussions of the concept in anthropology, not least at the back of a renewed debate over it due to Piketty’s legacy. This book was originally published as a special issue of History & Anthropology.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). The Global Life of Austerity:Comparing Beyond Europe. Berghahn Books. ISBN 9781785338700. 149 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2017). From Clans to Co-ops: Confiscated Mafia Land in Sicily. Berghahn Books. ISBN 9781785334009. 236 p. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2015). The Solidarity Economy in the Greek Crisis: Movementality, economic democracy and social reproduction. Berghahn Books. ISBN 9781782388449. 20 p. Full text in Research Archive

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• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2025). Er antropologi (fortsatt) en humanistisk disiplin? Norsk antropologisk tidsskrift. ISSN 0802-7285. 36(1), p. 80–82. doi: 10.18261/nat.36.1.10. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2025). Of an ongoing crisis: Ethnographic poems. Anthropology and Humanism. ISSN 1559-9167. 50(1). doi: 10.1111/anhu.70018. Full text in Research Archive
• Kolshus, Thorgeir; Sommerfelt, Tone; Fjeld, Heidi E & Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2025). Tribute to Signe Howell (1942–2025). Ethnologia Europaea. ISSN 0425-4597. 55(1), p. 101–106. doi: 10.3167/ee.2025.550107. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Professor Signe Howell passed away on 25 January, leaving a virtually unfillable void at the University of Oslo's Department of Social Anthropology, where she had been working since 1987. She joined us from the University of Edinburgh, coming as a welcome breath of fresh air with her combination of erudition, theoretical sophistication and a remarkable fascination with all things human. The latter trait had followed her since her childhood in the south of Norway through multiple life-changing events, including widespread travelling and a longer stint with the London experimental street art and performance group The Theatre of Mistakes in the 1960s.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2024). Anti-Mafia, unscripted: On discourse, moral borders and the public space. In Heywood, Paolo (Eds.), New anthropologies of Italy: Politics, history and culture. Berghahn Books. ISSN 9781805395850. p. 198–218. doi: 10.3167/9781805395850. Full text in Research Archive
• Rudi, Axel & Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2024). Vengeance of Sovereignty: New Formations in the State-Sovereignty-Territory Nexus. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2023). What’s in a Notion? Reply to Amalia Sa'ar. Current Anthropology. ISSN 0011-3204. 64(1), p. 118–119. doi: 10.1086/723299. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros & Martin, Keir James Cecil (2021). Marshall Sahlins (1930-2021). Jacobin. ISSN 2158-2602. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2021). Doxiadis, Evdoxios & Aimee Placas (eds). Living under austerity: Greek society in crisis. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute. ISSN 1359-0987. doi: 10.1111/1467-9655.13585. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2021). Understanding the neighbours. Avgi. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2020). In Cyprus, the Golden Passports Scheme Shows Us How Capitalism and Corruption Go Hand in Hand. Jacobin. ISSN 2158-2602. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2020). Notes on the 500 Euro: On mafias and instituted precarity. In Sen, Atreyee; Lindquist, Johan & Kolling, Marie (Ed.), Who’s Cashing In?: Contemporary Perspectives on New Monies and Global Cashlessness. Berghahn Books. ISSN 9781789209150. p. 130–142. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). Reply to puccio-den. Current Anthropology. ISSN 0011-3204. 60(1), p. 140–140. doi: 10.1086/701628. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). Book review of Alison Sánchez Hall. 2018. "All or none: Cooperation and sustainability in Italy’s red belt". Anuac. Rivista della Società Italiana di Antropologia Culturale (SIAC). 8(1), p. 251–253. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). Book review of Stavroula Pipyrou. 2016. "The Grecanici of Southern Italy: governance, violence, and minority politics". Ethnos. ISSN 0014-1844. 84(5), p. 1–2. doi: 10.1080/00141844.2019.1668816. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). A Conversation Around Keith Hart: Swimming into the Current of Human Society Through History edited by Catherine Alexander and Huon Wardle. Cultural anthropology. ISSN 0886-7356. Full text in Research Archive
• Alexander, Catherine; Wardle, Huon; Chevalier, Sophie; Gbadamosi, Gabriel; Laterza, Vito & Ortiz, Horacio [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2019). A Conversation Around Keith Hart: Swimming into the Current of Human Society Through History. Fieldsights. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). Ethnography on social relations. [Journal]. Ta Nea . Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). The Cyprus Problem: intervention on a taboo subject. Kathimerini. ISSN 1108-9792. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2019). Self in (and with) the world: Keith Hart's memoir. Sociologia e Antropologia. ISSN 2236-7527. 9(3), p. 1019–1025. doi: 10.1590/2238-38752019v9313. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). Discussant on conference closing plenary “Precarity”, EASA Biannual Conference, Stockholm University. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). “Of the EU, mafias and money: Notes on the 500 Euro note”. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). “Citizenship by investment? Elite mobility in the new EU. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). “Antisemitism and conspirational historicism”. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). Panel co-organiser. Conspiracy theories and conspiracy practices: Moving between rationalities. (with Steven Sampson, University of Lund.). Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2018). “The faceless cooperative: When our informants go capitalist”. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2017). “Show me the money”: Conspiracy theories and wealth. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2017). Reversing the world: Austerity from the anthropological point of view. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2017). The commons and solidarity economies: Meanings in crises. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). The Anti-Middleman Movement in Greece. Global Dialogue: Newsletter for the international Sociological Association. 6(1). Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). Review for Knight, D., History, time and economic crisis in Greece, Palgrave (2015). Anthropological Quarterly. ISSN 0003-5491. 88(3), p. 1025–1028. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). “Co-Depending on your word: Dual personhood and mafia betrayal.” (In)Dependence Workshop, University of Oslo. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). “Mafia land grabbing in Sicily: Gendered genealogies of property”. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). “What are we talking about when we talk about the Mafia? Futures of a contested term,” Panel co-organized (with N. Ben-Yehoyada, University of Cambridge). Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). “Accidental’ effects and continual crisis: Engaging with austerity across social and historical lines”. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2016). “70% Zapatista!: Food activism in crisis”. Invited seminar, LAIOS, EHESS, Paris. Full text in Research Archive
• Bertelsen, Bjørn Enge; Rio, Knut; Rakopoulos, Theodoros; Korsbrekke, Mari Hanssen; Styve, Maria Dyveke & Hjortsberg, Jacob [Show all 8 contributors for this article] (2015). "In the Event: A Mancunian Transplant in Bergen". Collective paper presented in the Department of social anthropology's seminar series. Chaired by Edvard Hviding. 23 April 2015. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This seminar takes as its point of departure Bruce Kapferer’s influence on and interest in the notion of the event in anthropology – in Bergen and elsewhere. Instead of providing a genealogy of the term where his Mancunian approach is traced, members of Bruce Kapferer’s research project ‘Egalitarianism: Forms, Processes, Comparisons’ will present short interventions on the recent Charlie Hebdo killings in Paris, currently approached and worked on as a critical event by the group. In alphabetical order, speakers include Bjørn E. Bertelsen, Jacob Hjortsberg, Mari H. Korsbrekke, Theodoros Rakopoulos, Knut M. Rio, Axel Rudi, Maria D. Styve and Alessandro Zagato.

• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2015). 2015. The future lasts a long time…or is it here already? The Left in power in Greece. Focaalblog. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2015). Review for the book “Arts of the political: new openings for the Left”, by Ash Amin and Thrift, Nigel. Critique of Anthropology. ISSN 0308-275X. 34(2). Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2015). ‘Exception’, solidarity, and conferral politics: crossroads of the ‘Greek’ crisis. Allegra. Full text in Research Archive
• Rakopoulos, Theodoros (2015). “Another take on markets: the solidarity impromptu urban takeovers in the Greek crisis”. Full text in Research Archive

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