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  • Troubles With Turtles: Cultural Understandings of the Environment on a Greek Island
  • Roland S. Moore
Dimitrios Theodossopoulos , Troubles With Turtles: Cultural Understandings of the Environment on a Greek Island. New York: Berghahn Books. 2003. Pp. xii + 196. Six illustrations. $59.95 hardback, $25.00 paper.

An ethnography should not be held to the same review standards as a literary work, with expectations of a rich plot and sophisticated character development. Nevertheless, the fundamental organization (analogous to a plot) of Theodossopoulos's study of contested land on Zakynthos includes driving dramatic conflicts between landowners and conservationists, villagers and the state, and more generally, between people and the natural world surrounding them. Moreover, the book introduces the reader to an ensemble cast of witty villagers who collectively teach the author about their understandings of their relationships to their environment. Accordingly, this book has a narrative appeal reaching beyond anthropologists and ecologists to a far wider audience.

The author relies upon observations, interviews and archival data to reconstruct the distant and recent social history of Vassilikos, a fertile peninsula on Zakynthos made famous by its beautiful shorelines. Not only are these beaches alluring to tourists, but they attract rare sea turtles that bury their eggs in the warm sands.

The impetus for the author to undertake this research was the desire to reach a more nuanced understanding of the dramatic struggle between ecologists who attempt to protect endangered sea turtle hatcheries and the villagers who feel threatened and stymied by the restrictions on building and other land use posed by the presidential decree protecting turtle habitats, not to mention the movement of the Greek government towards establishing a marine sanctuary for the turtles. [End Page 410]

As a reflexive work of ethnography, the book is successful in portraying the internal journey of a researcher—the author—beginning as an ecological activist, moving on to the role of suspected spy, and eventually to becoming a trusted member of the community. One of Theodossopoulos's main methods of gaining increased entrée was the time-honored anthropological practice of engaging in participant-observation with a heavy emphasis on getting his hands dirty, literally, in assisting with olive harvests, hunting, and other physically challenging pursuits. Particularly evocative are fieldnote excerpts from different stages of his research, illustrating deeper layers of understanding as a result of his interactions with the villagers.

For example, a year after commencing fieldwork, Theodossopoulos wrote:

While we were herding his flock across the landlord's land, Old Dionysis pointed to the landlord's mansion (arhontiko). He talked about the warehouses, barns, the animals (ta zontana), the carts and coaches (kara kai karotses gia anthropous), the "many horses." "There used to be several hamlets around this mansion," Old-Dionysis said and pointed to the ruined, small houses I had noticed before: "There the landlord used to organize workers from other villages and his own semproi (landless tenants). He had fifty families of semproi living on his land!"

One way to conceptualize scientific progress is what Wilhelm Windelband, a follower of Kant, termed the nomothetic approach. This is a view of science built upon progressive connections between investigator-initiated studies that ultimately flesh out our understanding of broader scientific principles. Theodossopoulos's work showcases the nomothetic connectedness of the impressive corpus of Greek, Cypriot, and other Mediterranean community studies, with frequent reference to relevant passages in both well-known and obscure works. The author makes use of the extant literature to foreground the central focus of the book: the complex relationship between humans and the natural world around them.

A recurring theme in the anthropological literature on Greece, exemplified by the Charles Stewart's Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture and Laurie Kain Hart's Time, Religion & Social Experience in Rural Greece, is that Greek villagers impose on the unruly physical world around them an order (tãjh) that is simultaneously cultural, religious, and moral. Echoing and amplifying these works, Theodossopoulos explores detailed aspects of this phenomenon, including the way in which villagers maintain order in hunting, agricultural production, and especially the care and maintenance of their own farm animals.

As in every other ethnography of rural Greece...

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