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My afterword engages six papers in the special issue “Archives and Anthropologies: From Histories to Futures”. It teases out particular arguments, locates common themes and explores the papers' relevance to wider debates in anthropology and visual culture. My paper particularly focuses on discussions around anthropology's analytical priorities and the position of the visual/material Vis-à-vis the social. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents some basic characteristics of the subculture of local society in the southern Peloponnese in Greece during the twentieth century. In particular, it examines the basic anthropological and social elements that formed the character of the members of the local society in Mani during the early part of the century, by emphasizing (i) the clan structure of the particular society, and (ii) the militarization of Mani as a strategy for mediation in local social relations. The paper then analyses the way in which these basic social characteristics were interwoven with the dynamics of the political situation during the twentieth century (the Second World War, the occupation of Greece by Italian and German forces, and the Greek Civil War) by exploring the cultural habitus of the left-wing and the right-wing political networks in the region. Finally, it refers to the dialectics of the dynamic relationship between a clan-based local society and the political events of the late 1940s, by means of some observations on the local social institution of the vendetta. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Values of honourable courtship are expressed in dance and this paper is an ethnographic reconstruction of a Greek island dance called the sousta practised on the Dodecanesian island of Rhodes during the interwar period (1925-1940). Its performance was a dynamic interplay of gender roles that mediated romance and moved the performers toward the resolution of marriage. The aim of the paper is to elaborate on values ascribed to men and women during the occasion of dancing at a village wedding in southern Rhodes. The interplay of grace (hari) and honour (timi) will locate why and how men reveal through hari and why women are concealed through timi during the dance performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an ethnographic account of ancient Greek drama performances that take place in contemporary Greece. The material presented here is part of the data that were collected, mainly through participant observation, interviews and newspapers, during 1997 and 1998 in Athens. The paper illuminates an aspect of modem ancient drama performances that has not been taken into account until today: it treats them as commemorative ceremonies that produce, reproduce, and transmit social memory. The interrelation and interdependence between social memory and ethnic identity construction processes are analyzed and is shown that ancient drama performances, due to specific characteristics, constitute something more than mere theatrical events (as they are defined within the Western tradition). These performances, which convey, sustain, and transmit perceptions of a glorious culture of the past, become, for their creators and spectators, as members of an ethnic group, occasions for consciously remembering their ethnic past, and coming, in a way, to a “mythical identification” with it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the past is used to interrogate the present under conditions of social and economic crisis. It focuses on the ways national history and personal historicity blended in the media frenzy and public reactions generated in the summer of 2014 by archaeological discoveries in a burial mound in Northern Greece that captured the attention of the nation for many months. During a time of intense debate over the privatization of national resources, growing demands for Nazi war-crime reparations, and increasing pauperization, popular speculation over the mound as a hiding place for priceless treasures was very often informed by mistrust towards the state, its representatives, and its experts. I look into history and culture to investigate how the past in conditions of crisis and uncertainty can weigh heavy in peoples’ identity claims, social demands, and moral economies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In Trikala, central Greece, specific historical events significantly inform understandings of the present economic crisis through what is termed “cultural proximity”. This is the notion that previous times of social and economic turmoil, apparently distant points in time, are embodied within the context of the present. Some past epochs of prosperity and crisis have proved more significant than others in shaping contemporary crisis experience. As accounts of the Great Famine of 1941–1943 are brought to the fore by the current economic crisis, concepts of lineal time and the nationalization of critical events must be interrogated. Through considering theories of time as proposed by Michel Serres, this paper addresses how specific historical events can become embodied during the current economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper focuses on dream-experiences and dream-narratives as sites of creativity and agency. Through the ethnographic exploration of dreams recounted to me mainly by informants in Thessaloniki, Greece I will argue that dreams are means of making sense of the world in a relational and intersubjective manner, as well as instances of the human capacity to invent new forms and ëoriginal figurationsi. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nationalist character of divine interventions that marked Greek society during critical periods. In order to analyze the diachronic structure and the variety of such interventions that can occasionally even convey an anti-Greek meaning, distant and more recent events of Greek history will be discussed. It will be shown that the warrior saints, who are predominantly male characters, are presented as able to assist the Greek warriors against the national (or the local) enemy. The key figure of the Virgin seems to retain her female attributes and to waver between two different positions, one of inferiority and one of superiority: perceived as a female character who may need protection, she can also guarantee ultimate victory for the Greeks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nationalist character of divine interventions that marked Greek society during critical periods. In order to analyse the diachronic structure and the variety of such interventions that can occasionally even convey an anti-Greek meaning, distant and more recent events of Greek history will be discussed. It will be shown that the warrior saints, who are predominantly male characters, are presented as able to assist the Greek warriors against the national (or the local) enemy. The key figure of the Virgin seems to retain her female attributes and to waver between two different positions, one of inferiority and one of superiority: perceived as a female character who may need protection, she can also guarantee ultimate victory for the Greeks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the interrelations between politics and music as they appear in the ongoing debate about the rebetiko genre, within the intellectual circles of the left-wing movement in the post-war era. Through the analysis of the rebetika texts and biographical material, the ambivalent attitude of the Greek Left movement about the political context and the class affiliation of rebetiko are exposed. The Left saw popular music as a pedagogic means for inculcating class-consciousness among the masses and promoting optimistic utopian images of a possible communist future. In the framework of this politically motivated consideration, the attempt of left-wing intellectuals to interpret and evaluate the rebetiko genre led to various ambivalences and controversies within the Left movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Literature is produced within society and reflects social phenomena and therefore it must not be neglected in any interscientific approach to the way a certain geographical area contributes to the construction of an identity. The main purpose of this paper is to point to some directions concerning the study of the Mediterranean, by means of literary works. It is based on the example of Greece and presents a brief discussion through the history and certain themes of Greek literature (movement, traveling, experience of the refugees etc.), concentrating on the search for a national identity, towards either an introspective or a cosmopolitan point of view. The study is not exhaustive; it is indicative of the way literature, both from a contemporary and a general historical point of view, is able to express a more indepth research into the Mediterranean communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bringing literature on trauma and politics together with Deleuze's writing on sense and events, this ethnographic study considers how traumatized subjects contribute to emerging political landscapes. I argue that slow motion traumas root lived crises that can become shared, informing critical perspectives, agencies, and grounding potentially disruptive ethics and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Herodotus' History opens with a remarkable proem where he sets forth his programme and offers competing narratives about the causes of war between the Greeks and barbarians. This article examines the proem and looks in particular at the stories about the abductions of Io, Europa, Medea, and Helen. Rather than see the proem as a light-hearted or parodic rejection of alternate histories, this article argues that Herodotus uses the proem to raise urgent questions of culture, identity, and historical meaning. Each of the four women gets entangled in complex cultural histories, and each challenges any simple relationship between the individual and cultural location. The fact that Herodotus associates each of them with displacement and dislocation implies that he is working with a dynamic understanding of history, in which movement and geography play a central role. If the proem points to cultural plurality, however, it still has to engage with the central polarity of Greeks and barbarians that underpins the History; this polarity, which remains in place from the first sentence, stands in counterpoint to the openness promised by the rest of the proem. Against the limitations imposed by the violent antithesis of Greek and barbarian, then, Herodotus begins his monumental history with an exploration of cultural plurality and contact. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In five villages of Northern Greece, the communities of the Anastenaria have a long tradition of fire-walking rituals. The Anastenaria are Orthodox Christians, and their rituals are performed in honour of saints Constantine and Helen. However, the majority of Greek scholars have argued that these rituals originate from the ancient orgiastic cults of Dionysus. This theory was intentionally designed to serve specific political agendas, namely to prove the continuity of Greek civilization from ancient to modern Greece. Despite lacking any evidentiary support whatsoever, it became the dominant view of the Anastenaria for more than a century and has heavily influenced not only the ethnographic representation of this tradition but also the tradition itself. This article explores ethnographic practice in the context of the Anastenaria, its effects on this tradition, and the implications for further anthropological research on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ruins of an ancient Greek temple on a Cycladic island form part of an Orthodox Christian shrine. To local people and returning migrants, the site is that of their patron saint; its pre-Christian past is irrelevant except in so far as it establishes their specific link with the ancient world, and thus with national claims of unbroken continuity between modern and ancient Greece. To early travellers and antiquarians, and to today's archaeologists, it has been primarily the ancient site which is of interest, while tourists are more concerned in finding “an unspoilt island”. A historical survey of information about the ancient and the Christian site reveals ambiguities and confusions about both. These multiple meanings for locals and scholars are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against a located background - a focus that highlights the significance of place in the constitution of Gypsy identifications and runs counter to most of the assumptions shared by recent studies on Gypsies - the article tries to explore the tensions, ambiguities and contradictions generated by the involvement of the Gypsy musicians of Parakalamos, a village on the Greek-Albanian border, in issues concerning "tradition" and "authenticity". More specifically, the article considers how Gypsy music playing practices initially allowed Gypsy practitioners to be included in the nation-state project in a somewhat "dishevelled" form as local musicians; however, in the face of recent shifts in politics, culture and representation in Greece concerning multiculturalism and "cultural heritage", Gypsy musicians find themselves in the position of being recognised as "musical outsiders" that should by implication adhere to their distinct musical tradition. In this respect, although it has hardly been admitted, such a move runs counter to what constitutes the core of Gypsy musicianship: their locatedness. The article argues that within such "identitying" practices lurks an occlusion of the ways Parakalamos Gypsyness has been, and continues to be, dependent on place and music, and not on a separate, distinct and self contained Gypsy identity, thereby casting doubts on assumptions about what constitutes identity as such. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the transformations occurring in the context of Greek industry by paying special attention to the shipbuilding sector. In recent years, the economic crisis created extensive structural problems, acute deindustrialization, rising unemployment and a context of declining investment as well as employment uncertainty. Through the ethnographic research conducted in a workplace located at Piraeus, the author attempts to show the effects of these processes on the qualitative characteristics of labor relations as the latter are embedded in the strategies of supranational decision makers and mediated by the policies adopted by the Greek state regarding these issues. Finally, it is argued that local actors follow strategies and make decisions taking into account the asymmetrical context within which they are involved in order to make their lives possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the tangled question of continuity and change from the point of view of ritual. It brings together in dialogue recent theoretical approaches to ritual in anthropology with several examples of diachronic studies of Greek death practices. It points to the importance of focusing on questions of "form" in ritual practices—that is, "how" rituals work and are transmitted, more or less completely, from one generation to the next. It also considers the importance of historical consciousness, in particular the notion of "changing continuities", in understanding some of the existential ways that ritual addresses common human experiences of temporality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores the roots of prejudice and constructionism in Macedonia, Cyprus and Greece. Influence of political systems on social construction; Overview of articles about otherness and stereotypes; Social representations of ethnic groups.