Socialities of solidarity: revisiting the gift taboo in times of crises This article addresses solidarity and the opening of social spaces in the relations between refugees and residents of Greece who try to help them. ‘Socialities of solidarity’ materialise alternative worldviews; they are loci for the production of lateral relationships; places inhabited by the prospects that derive from the political production of sociality. The article discusses the ‘gift taboo’, dominant in the pre-crisis era, that reflects the risks of giving to the formation of horizontal relationships. In the contemporary ‘European refugee crisis, and other crises, the gift taboo has collapsed, posing challenges to the egalitarian visions of sociality. Key words sociality, solidarity, gift, European refugee/migrant crisis, Greece Introduction In 2015, an unprecedented stream of material aid was transported to Greek islands from all over the world and different parts of Greece in order to address the ‘European refugee crisis’ in the country. The recipients of these offerings were various solidarity initiatives and associations, some of which had recently emerged as a response to the huge numbers of people who crossed the Greek–Turkish sea borders. Delivery companies undertook the pro-bono transfer of parcels to non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and collectivities. A single transport company transferred more than 6,100 packages, weighing over 95 tons, between November 2015 and January 2016. 1 Storehouses were full of clothes, food and other items. The Internet was flooded with crowd-funding campaigns by people from abroad who gathered contributions in order to travel and volunteer in different parts of Greece. Local groups already active in refugee assistance were startled by the amount of donations in objects and money, and the number and enthusiasm of new volunteers who came to join their activities. Tourists in the Greek islands decided to turn their vacations into the systematic assistance of border-crossers, distributed water and food or transferred people with their cars. This massive delivery of material aid portrays a shift from the dominant understanding of the gift in Greek society. Greek ethnography has depicted a picture of a society where giving is met with suspicion, and the limitations of solidarity are bounded to the predominant agonistic principles of social interaction. Nevertheless, in line with the phenomena explored in the other articles in this issue, local responses to the refugee crisis in 2015, and, in particular, the abundance of giving, call for a re-evaluation of the contemporary practices vis-à-vis the gift in Greece. In this article, I discuss socialities of solidarity in relation to giving, and what I name ‘the gift taboo’: the predominant prohibition of material and immaterial offerings 1 http://www.taxydromiki.gr/ypostirizoyme-tin-antimetopisi-tis-anthropistikis-krisis. Social Anthropology (2016) 24, 2 185–199. © 2016 European Association of Social Anthropologists. 185 doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12305 KATERINA ROZAKOU