Household, Village and Village Confederation in Southeastern Europe (review)

290 Reviews the tragic events of the post World War II years. Moreover, the volume is somewhat confusing in that neither the photographs nor the drawings are sufficiently integrated with the remainder of the volume . Despite these limitations, the volume is a testimonial to Greek women and to the courage they displayed in the face of human brutality . Adamantia Pollis New School for Social Research Paul H. Stahl, Household, Village and Village Confederation in Southeastern Europe. East European Monographs. New York: Columbia University Press. 1986. Pp. vi + 247. $25.00. This book synthesizes kinship, inheritance, and household, village , and regional organization among the Romanians, southern Slavs, Albanians, and Greeks. Coverage is densest for the Romanians , less so successively for the Slavs, Albanians, and Greeks. In its breadth it is a tour de force in a literature that has been typically parochial. Of course a synoptic work on this kaleidoscopic region can be criticised by any specialist working within it for failure to recognize this or that phenomenon or reference. The presentation is for the most part a recital of ethnographic detail in compressed form— the "thick condensation" typical of Continental, especially Balkan, ethnology. Some important theoretical points are made, but the book is not organized around them. Stahl consistently relates household composition to practices of inheritance and household architecture . Particular attention is given to labor exchange and corporate rights in resources at the family, village, and regional level. Interpersonal relations and age and sex roles within the family are also described , although the uncritical acceptance of evidence of the inferior position of women would no doubt offend some modern theoretical, not to mention moral, sensitivities. Stahl explicitly disavows any classification of households that does not take into proper account their developmental cycle, but at the same time accepts uncritically the distinction by some ethnographers between zadrugas that contain a father and married sons and those that contain only married brothers . The difference, of course, is only that of the timing of division. Neither does he recognize the importance of demographic factors such as differential life expectancy. Reviews 291 The theoretically most exciting portions of the work are on the religious and magical symbolism related to group identity and corporacy at the household, village, and regional levels. Stahl shows important parallels in socio-religious organization across ethnic groups. He does not discuss whether the existence of holy places for units at different levels is an inevitable outcome inherent in any social organization or whether some of these similarities might be construed as parallel historical developments within the framework of a particular universal church. The theoretical underpinnings for this problem lie well back in structural-functional analysis and in some applications to European and even Balkan data, but Stahl does not identify these in a theoretical context. The book will make instructive reading for western European historians of family and household, who when they reach for comparative evidence typically find it easier to include former colonies than neighbors in their discourse. At the same time, Stahl's analysis would have benefited from studies of socio-religious organization in other areas in order to address the higher level theoretical problems that remain largely implicit in his own. E. A. Hammel University of California, Berkeley E. Marcopoulos-Gambarotta and J. Scamp, Just Listen 'n Learn Greek. Lincolnwood, 111. Passport Books. National Textbook Company. 1985. Pp. 235 + 3 χ 60 min. audio cassette tapes + D. Rolfs, Just Listen 'η Learn Language Programs: Teachers Manual. Pp. 51. $29.95. This language-learning package for modern Greek consists of a textbook, three 60-minute audio cassettes paralleling the text, and the general teacher's manual for the series. The text consists of a general introduction for the do-it-yourselfer (4-6), 15 lessons covering topics from "Talking about yourself through "Shopping" to "Stating your intensions" (7-221), a grammar survey (223-224), the numbers (225), a vocabulary (227-233), and an index (235). The manual gives a brief account of the methodology of the Just Listen 'n Learn series (1-2), tape-recorder use advice (3), the description of four approaches to using the system in a classroom situation (4-18) and three appendices providing: 1.) "a description...