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  • Iron in the Soul: Displacement, Livelihood and Health in Cyprus. Studies in Forced Migration
  • Roland S. Moore
Peter Loizos. Iron in the Soul: Displacement, Livelihood and Health in Cyprus. Studies in Forced Migration, Volume 23. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2008. Pp. xii + 210. 22 illustrations, 2 maps. Paperback $29.95/Cloth $90.00.

A substantial and growing body of international literature addresses the consequences of involuntary migration, including the adoption of refugee identities, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and somatization of the distress that [End Page 363] typically accompanies the wrenching aftermath of displacement. As one of the latest in a series of studies of forced migration published by Berghahn Books, Iron in the Soul: Displacement, Livelihood and Health in Cyprus attempts to test the hypothesis raised by earlier refugee researchers (including Elizabeth Colson, to whom the volume is dedicated) that premature death and a constellation of health problems are associated with the stresses of forced migration.

Ostensibly, Iron in the Soul is a book about the long-term physical and mental health repercussions of Greek Cypriot villagers' displacement due to expulsion from their community, Argaki, in the Turkish occupied lands of Cyprus. However, Peter Loizos's answer to that fundamental research question takes the form of an ethnographically grounded analysis that draws from numerous disciplines, including political science, public health, demography and history. The thematically organized chapters reflect his holistic approach, including a portrait of increasingly tense ethnic relations in the years preceding the crisis that evicted the villagers from their home, diachronic economic analyses, recountings of global, island and community politics and how they influenced the events before, during, and after the villagers's flight from Argaki. Particularly poignant are villagers's narrations of their comparatively recent visits to their natal homes after the barriers to visitation were suddenly lifted in 2003.

The result of this interdisciplinary tour is a wide-ranging and engaging depiction of experiencing and responding to the pain of exile. Loizos makes the case that the severity of the blow was ameliorated to a great extent through the villagers's ability to achieve key goals, including ensuring children's marriages and other family-oriented pursuits. To do so required creativity and resilience and reliance upon support from kin. Echoing a number of anthropological studies on ritual healing in Greece, Loizos identified engagement with the Orthodox church as an additional way in which some but by no means all of the villagers made sense of their sacrifices and suffering. With respect to dealing with illness, some of which was exacerbated by the stresses of exile, refugees's priority access to quality healthcare services also appeared to play an important role. Nevertheless, Loizos neither sugarcoats the agonies experienced along the way, nor glorifies the survival and gradual normalization of the refugees's new transplanted lives.

Loizos does not tie his wide-ranging analysis to any one theoretical point of view. However, his assessment of comparatively good health outcomes stemming in part from economic and social successes of the refugees from Argaki once they were resettled is entirely consistent with the increasingly popular social determinants of health approach. The social determinants of health perspective, pioneered by such theoreticians as Engels, include wealth/poverty and social capital as key variables connecting socioeconomic status to health outcomes (Marmot and Wilkinson, 2006).

Although he notes that he did not conduct research continuously over the past forty years with the study population, Loizos is uniquely qualified to write about them, because his original ethnographic research dates to 1968, well before the villagers were forced from their land in 1974. Moreover, because his father came from the town, he relied upon ties of close kinship as well as the [End Page 364] usual relationships built through long-term fieldwork. Perspectives of the Turkish Cypriots from the same village are conveyed through the assistance of a Turkish Cypriot sociologist colleague who shared his interview data with Loizos. A parallel study of Turkish Cypriots uprooted from the Southern part of the island would add yet more texture to the present volume, but Loizos suggests that such a comparative study would be better taken up by another researcher.

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