Mothers-in-law and Daughters-in-law: Politicizing Confrontations

In a village on mainland Greece, the ideology of virilocality was being challenged in the mid-1980s by the emergent ideology of the nuclear household. This ideological contest, which the village perceived as a struggle between indigenous tradition and the forces of modernity, was mediated largely through the conflict between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law. Young women employed the symbolism of mass consumer goods in order to articulate the primacy of the conjugal bond over the unity between parents and sons. In this process, a wide range of "traditional" values and prescriptions of feminine identity was problematized and negotiated. Thus, with the aid of the language of consumption, the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law conflict of interest (often analyzed as a rift in feminine solidarity that contributes to the muted condition of women ) functioned as a means through which women articulated and helped to give concrete shape to a community-wide struggle over central meanings and values.