On 8 July 2012, I passed by a detached house in Maroussi, an upper-middle class suburb in Athens. Ioanna, then sixty-fve and retired, was previously a well-paid employee at the Bank of Greece and mother of two teenagers in the late 1980s. She had agreed to assist my research project entitled ‘Lifestyles, Gender Relations and Social Spaces in 1980s Athens’ with an interview. 2 Since she spends most of her summertime in Syros, an island close to Athens, we needed to have three phone conversations to arrange an interview meeting. During these conversations Johanna posed the following question at least twice: ‘But what kind of history can you write about the 1980s? It was a period of prosperity, an era of abundance! It was a golden age!’ Ioanna’s objection is understandable. In Greece, from the 1990s to the present, oral history has been mainly used by historians focusing on turbulent periods, such as the experience of occupation or the civil war years. 3 Consequently, many interviewees felt astonished at my invitation to speak about everyday life issues during the 1980s such as changes in consumption habits, gender relations and cultural geographies. In general, before the recent economic crisis, the 1980s were considered as a period of stability and relative afuence. Afer the political changeover of 1974 the country consolidated democratic stability, experienced noticeable economic growth, gained full participation in the European integration project and improved its public infrastructure. 4 Consumption standards improved. Modern, expensive technological products (such as VCRs) appeared in the living rooms of lower and middle class households. 5 In Athens, the reorganization of entertainment politics was further associated with conspicuous consumption; something evident in the popularization of expensive entertainment practices (e.g. going out to bouzoukia halls and drinking imported drinks, such as whisky). 6 Gender relations also changed. Albeit the patriarchal family remained the main organizational social unit, premarital relations that were quite common at least since the 1970s experienced further difusion. Indicatively, in 1991, one in three female students of the University of Athens stated that they had had sexual relations before adulthood while according to a similar survey this percentage was only 17 per cent in 1981. 7 Te climate of optimism was evident. 8 Opinions on the ‘happy go lucky 1980s’ survived until very recently. A survey held a few months before the beginning of the current fnancial crisis showed that 36 per cent of the respondents saw the elections of 18 October 1981 as the most crucial turning point in post-dictatorship political history. Te same respondents viewed Andreas Papandreou as the most important politician of CHAPTER 14 REVISITING THE GREEK 1980s THROUGH THE PRISM OF CRISIS 1 Panagiotis Zestanakis 30889.indb 257 27/10/2015 14:47