Commentary

Commentary Ernestine Friedl The four papers under discussion represent the marriage of anthropology with economic and social history. That marriage permits us to see Greece and its people in a state of flux over long stretches of time. The authors describe a population on the move, village communities that change location and membership, shifts in the value of land and labor, the appearance and disappearance of class formations, and alterations in the meaning of rituals. The image of Greece we carry away with us is that of patterns in a giant kaleidoscope being turned for us to inspect and wonder at. Each of the authors suggests some conclusions to be drawn from the detailed data she analysed. All of them demonstrate the importance of the persistent action and reaction between local cultures and societies and events external to the particular local situation. As Dubisch writes, the papers contribute to our ability to relate on-theground , hands-on anthropological studies of small populations to forces which must be studied by other methods. But the particulars in each case study are different. Costa concentrates on what forces have influenced migration in Cephallonia. She concludes that they are economic structures in combination with cultural perceptions. Commercial argriculture and access to economic opportunities on the one hand, and the recognition of those opportunities and the ideology of consumption on the other. From her studies of village formation, location and demography, Sutton draws some implications for modernization theory, and for understanding the structural and cultural importance of the family, marriage rules, and the cultural constructions of "insider" and "outsider." Bennett is struck by the way the Lehonites participation in the regional and national economy has broken the direct links between the dependent and independent classes in the community. Journal of Modern Greek Studies, Volume 6, 1988. 265 266 Ernestine Friedl Even though people continue to live in Lehonia, she concludes, their class postion is determined by their place in the economy outside it. Cowan demonstrates the interpénétration of Greek folklorists, the anthropologist, and a local population engaged in executing and negotiating meanings of a ritual. But let us return to the image of the kaleidoscope to search for more possible consequences for Greek culture and society of the constant movement of places and people, and their changing relations . Following Sutton's example of searching for implications, I am led to ask,66 Is the relative homogeneity of Greek culture a consequence of the regular need to renegotiate cultural forms and meanings as one moves from place place?" Peoples lives as individuals and families and their relationships overlap one another as some parts of villages move, others do not, as some people establish a new village and others stay behind, as people change from one occupation to another, and from time to time, and the same activities have different values and prestige. Jockeying for rank and position sometimes expressed as honor, sometimes as knowledge of and access to education and prestigious consumption goods requires new combinations of old patterns. The constant negotiations of cultural meanings may, then, have resulted in a high degree of uniformity in standard spoken Greek as a language, and in cultural assumptions understandable enough to all so that communication remains possible. Cultural variations in the different regions of Greece, in urban and rural areas have not therefore, if I am right, constituted barriers to conversations among Greek peoples. This should hold true for urban sites as well; as we have seen 'rural' and 'urban' are separated by very permeable boundaries. But even within urban centers some of the flux might be common. By chance, at the time of the anthropological meetings, I was re-reading The Third Wedding. I was struck by the mobility of the characters in that novel. They moved from one city to another, they moved to different places within the same city, and they established new relationships with different people everywhere they went. The situations so well described in these four papers lead me to conclude that Greece is an ideal locus for examining the interplay between meaning and practice, between ideology and behavior. Why, for example, is there no congruity between perceived categories of Commentary...