1. State and Political Relations: Beyond Patronage

 

The political has been a privileged field within the dominant historiographical paradigm in Greece; but it has been researched largely in ways that have contributed to the formation of a methodological canon that privileges the view from above, with an emphasis on leadership, a focus on official discourse as representative of society, and so forth. On the other hand, this very same locus of research witnessed an important break with such tendencies, which took place in the decades after World War II and originated in both Social Anthropology and an increasingly influential Social History. These alternative paradigms in the study of the political were inspired primarily by the classic studies of two scholars who resided outside Greece and wrote in English: John Campbell’s study of social and political processes among the Sarakatsani; and John Petropoulos’ study of the formation of the Greek state in the Ottoman period. A common denominator in both studies is the concept of patronage, popular at the time in structural-functionalist circles.

In the following decades, the paradigm of patronage became the core of a narrative about the genesis of the Greek state, which focuses on modernization. It also became a locus for criticism as this narrative was challenged from two sides, the one deploying a class-related approach and the other, an approach that placed greater emphasis on the role of political parties. Moreover, the study of populism resulted in a heightened research interest in the cultural preconditions of political action; while the new preoccupation with identity politics put the issue of the content of political relations in second place. At the same time, a new conceptualization of the political emerged, in which the notion of “civil society” was a key focus. The present session is a return to one of the classic loci of Greek Social Anthropology and History, albeit on new terms, foregrounding issues such as the cultural formation of political relations in the field of “charity” in past times or of “civil society” today.

 

2. The Politics of Violence

 

In the last two decades, confrontations in the context of post-colonial societies, civil wars and ethnic conflicts, as well as the issues of terrorism, of collective memory and of the healing of the trauma of violence, have created an urgent need to examine the discourses and practices of violence in order to understand both the present and the past. The nature of violence, whether physical or symbolic, is performative and closely connected to power relations. In this context, the exercise of violence constitutes a culturally embodied practice that has perpetrators as well as victims. The discourses that invest violent actions with meaning reconstruct the ways in which people submit to violence, challenge or appropriate it. The conceptualizations of violence are a vehicle for the circulation of concepts about the self that relate to class, gender, sexuality, race and nationality.

From the anthropological point of view, violence in Greek society has been systematically researched mainly in the ethnographic present, as a performartive practice (cf. contesting masculinity, blood-feud etc.), the cultural content of which is under examination (instead of being a priori categorized according to certain normative of ideological principles), while at the same time it has emerged as key issue for the understanding of social relations. Historians, on the other hand, have been studying the forms of interpersonal violence in recent years, by engaging in a dialogue both with the rich international historical scholarship and the contributions of anthropology. Recently, academic research on violence has come into the foreground of public interest through discussions among historians who examine the manifestations of violence during the Nazi occupation and the Civil War. The related scholarship and public discussion have contributed to the delimitation of this period as a distinct field of research, but have exploited the ethnographic experience in violence only to a rather limited extent. This session will focus on ethnographic and microhistorical moments in the diachrony of violence (interpersonal, among groups, institutionalized etc.), especially on its cultural determinants and various transformations, which will enable the integration of ethnographic experience into the historical study of violence.

 

3. State and Nationalism: Relations between Formal and Informal Discourse

 

In recent years, Greek nationalism has become an important focus of research, giving rise to a rich field of anthropological and historical scholarship based on different variants of the theory of the nation as a construct. On the one hand, we have a series of anthropological studies inspired by the rich ethnographic tradition of popular religion in Greece, which examine contemporary nationalism “from below”, within the framework of everyday life, on the basis of a distinction between formal (including, but not confined to “official”) and informal discourse. On the other hand, a younger generation of historians has placed in the center of scholarly research key concepts of nineteenth-century national ideology, such as “Hellenism”, and has contributed decisively to the deconstruction of the topoi of Greek nationalism. Despite the dynamic growth of these research fields, the degree of communication between them is still extremely small. In this session we wish to bring into dialogue these two scholarly traditions. We propose to examine the following issues: a) how do formal discourses about ethnic, minority and local identities get played out on the level of everyday life? b) How do formal discourses about national identity arrange and rearrange the organization of social experience? c) To what political aims are both formal discourses, and informal interpretations “from below”, directed?

 

 

4. Competing Nationalisms in “Local” Contexts: Comparative Approaches

 

This session focuses on the comparative discussion of ethnographic examples that examine the experience of nationalism in everyday life and in conditions of competition between antagonistic national ideologies. We wish to explore the ways in which an approach “from below” can highlight the historically and culturally defined aspects of nationalism. We take as a starting point Billig’s concept of “banal nationalism” and examine these issues through examples concerning Greece (Thrace), Cyprus (both the Greek and Turkish sides), as well as the Middle East (Israel and Palestine) and the Balkans, regions where nationalism historically emerged as part of the Ottoman heritage. In this respect, the following issues can be addressed: a) how do national ideologies get interpreted “from below”, and in which way do such interpretations contribute to the formation of conflictual conditions? b) Do views about the nation or about particular nationalisms get produced, which bring into question or even refute the “formal” discourse, in particular the state’s version of nationalism? c) How can one highlight the less visible aspects of particular conflicts by focusing on the ways in which nationalism is experienced in everyday life?

At the same time, individual presentations –and the discussion– are expected to address the issue of comparison, namely the ways in which ethnographical data originating from different “regions” can be compared to one another.

                              

5. The Politics of Culture: “Traditions” and“Cultural Heritage”

 

Culture, anthropology’s analytical category par excellence, is today a widely used concept within our everyday language. It has also emerged as a dynamic field of discourse and action for the negotiation of identity and symbolic boundaries. In this way, culture has become a field of contested claims and battles over who shall define it, as well as a field where alternative versions of local, ethnic and international identities are expressed. Some of the key issues that can be raised regarding the political manipulation of culture include: what agents are implicated in above processes? What practices do they pursue and what dynamics do they develop? Where does their influence begin and where does it end? How are the various levels of the political management of culture interconnected, under what circumstances does conflict emerge between them, and at what points are they being redefined as they interact with corresponding practices in other levels?

This session will focus on performative, communicative and consumptive practices that relate to the definition and reformulation of the concept of culture with reference to food, music, dancing performances, museums etc. It will examine processes of the patrimonialization, appropriation and contestation of “culture” in various political structures and fields (local administrative bodies and local organizations, cultural associations, state and European cultural policies).

 

6. The Politics of Difference and Boundaries

 

The social, cultural and political conditions in Greek society of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries led to the development of a distinctive regime –conceptual, political, administrative– for addressing and managing difference. In the past decade, this framework has come under strong pressure from a discourse about rights that has gradually established itself –and from a related process of minoritization, as well as from immigration to Greece and the dynamics of differentiation it has produced.

In this session we wish to examine the politics of the production and management of difference from a historical perspective. On the one hand, we are interested in the politics of difference in the early phase of the formation of the status quo, for instance in relation to the establishment of the borders of the Greek nation state and to the latter’s attitude towards populations with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds, especially in the context of population movements. On the other hand, we are interested in the ethnographic examination of political practices that attempt either to reproduce or to radically transform historically established forms of perception of cultural difference. Special reference will be made to the political use of discourses formed in the context of contemporary immigration, as well as to the political negotiation of difference between the state and the various minority and immigrant groups.

 

7. The Politics of Gender, Reproduction and Citizenship

 

Citizenship, one of the main concerns of Western democracies in the twentieth century, is normally understood to be held by persons who are full members of a community. Nevertheless, recent scholarship has shown that the model of the citizen, at least in the West, incorporates both male privilege and institutionalized heterosexuality. In other words, the notion of the citizen is not only always gendered but also closely dependent on a specific model of sexual conduct. On the other hand, in Euro-american societies (nowadays in Greece as well), contemporary performances of gender, sexuality, kinship, and reproduction, especially after the appearance of new technologies, manifest a reformulation of both subjectivity and of the model of the citizen. The following issues arise: a) how is subjectivity constructed through relations of power and resistance that are connected to gender, sexuality, kinship and reproduction? b) How is the concept of a subject, who is socially and culturally acknowledged as a citizen (as well as of the political in general), defined –and redefined– through such relations?

In Greece, special emphasis has been put on the discussion of the so-called “demographic problem”, while there are some studies –few for the time being– about the new technologies of reproduction. In this respect, we wish to focus on the politics of motherhood and reproduction in contemporary Greece, and to examine issues that relate to the highly political nature of reproduction; the control and distribution of knowledge and of related practices; the involvement in and interweaving of technologies with wider social, political and economic systems; the categorization of parents as capable (or not) for parenthood, according to age, race, class, nationality, sex, and sexual preference.