Correspondence

CORRESPONDENCE 313 Response to First Issue of Journal o f Mediterranean Studies The other day I received the maiden number of your Jo u rn a l o f M ed iterra n ea n S tudies and I enjoyed very much reading of your article and the other contributions. Congratula­ tions!! If the first number of the first volume sets the standard, the journal’s future looks very bright, indeed. I look forward to next issues. Henk Driessen K a th o lie ke U niversiteit F a cu lteit der Sociale W etenschappen Thank you for sending me a copy of the first issue of Jo u rn a l o f M ed iterra n ea n Studies. I have read it with great pleasure. This journal is long overdue. I have made a subscription for myself and ordered my Department Library to do the same. The next issues also seem very interesting. And I hope that you will be able to keep this very high standard in the future as well. Mart Bax U niversiteit A m sterdam F aculeit der Sociaal C ultúrele W etenschappen The category of the Mediterranean and Comparative Categories Thank you for sending me the first volume of your journal - 1 have been looking through it and am most impressed. I will try to convince my department to make a subscription. There is one major topic which moves me to write to you. This concerns your introductory paper. I enjoyed reading the second part, where you work with the notion of honour, relating it with the notion of person. It seems to me that that is the way to go round the issue, and that we have to do more thinking into the processes of personal value, expression and experience. Only I continue to be dissatisfied with the regional limitation. It seems to me that it is external to the argument - artificial, so to speak. That is also why I was unhappy with your reading of my paper. It seems to me that you miss what I consider to be its main drive: that anthropologists have to be self-conscious, critical and coherent concern­ ing the process of comparison. We should not use a category just because it exists. I take your point that, seen from a Por­ tugal that has freshly entered the EEC, the Mediterranean seems a slightly cumbersome political category. But you will understand that, apart from a certain malicious pleasure, that argument is not very effective, for it could be said that, seen from the point of view of Crete or Malta, the Mediterranean is a political life or death category. But surely such arguments are not the point of our dis­ cussion. If there is some comparative argu­ ment that can usefully be forewarded which applies (even if only vaguely) to the Mediterranean region, then I would be the last person to criticise it. The point is that I remain unconvinced by the attempts that have been done up to now, feeling that very often the arguments are useful whilst the regional placing, at best, responds to little more than academic inertia. Joao de Pina-Cabral U niversidade de L isboa In stitu to de C iencias Sociais ...