Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History, and an Island in Conflict

6. Children Constructing Ethnic Identities in Cyprus

siX Children Constructing Ethnic Identities in Cyprus Spyros Spyrou greek Cypriot children live in a divided society where identities are highly politicized and where being a particular kind of person implies a particular sense of political being. This chapter on the ideological becoming of children centers on two children, stalo and Marinos,1 and their political and ethnic lives as they unfold at a particular point in time in their particular local contexts. i met them in 1996 while conducting fieldwork in Cyprus for my doctoral dissertation. in a more general vein, the chapter addresses children’s agency in the world; about how they, as children, construct their ethnic identities in an active rather than passive manner as fully competent members of society. put another way, it is about the processes of ethnic socialization and cultural production and reproduction as these take place in contexts where real, unique, individual children live and act in a world which largely constrains but does not determine their political becoming. The intersection between childhood and ethnic identity construction remains largely unexplored. we still know very little about the processes by which children come to acquire a sense of collective identity, construct a sense of “self” and “other,” and participate in a world where issues of identity are of paramount importance. Though some work has been done in psychology, the studies that situate children’s identity construction in specific cultural and social contexts and examine their reciprocal impact are few and scattered (e.g., hatcher and troyna 1993; James 1993). similarly, 122 I Spyros Spyrou the intersection between childhood and nationalism is only now beginning to be addressed (e.g., Cullingford 2000; gullestad 1997; hengst 1997; holloway and Valentine 2000; Koester 1997; okely 1997), though for the last three decades ethnic identity and nationalism have been at the forefront of anthropological discussion (e.g., gellner 1983; Bryant, this volume). Moreover, studying identity construction among children in divided societies such as Cyprus remains in its infancy, though some studies have paved the way (e.g., Bryne 1997; Burman and reynolds 1990; Coles 1986; davey 1987; elbedour, Bastien, and Center 1997; spyrou 1999). understanding how identities are shaped in the early years of life can illuminate the process by which culture and ideology become meaningful and persuasive or fail to do so. The potential for ethnic identity and nationalism to result in violent conflict has further intensified the need to study such phenomena and try to understand how identities emerge, are sustained, and sometimes become destructive elements in interethnic contexts such as Cyprus (see papadakis, this volume). Children have been largely ignored by anthropology, a discipline which prides itself in studying people (Caputo 1995). The view that children are incomplete adults and therefore in a temporary stage which they will eventually grow out of has prevailed in much of the discipline’s history. This view shaped the research issues and questions anthropologists sought to investigate in relation to children. to the extent that it became of interest , childhood was used only to illustrate the importance of culture in a child’s upbringing. Cultural stability and continuity were assumed rather than problematized, and the more or less successful acquisition of cultural roles by children was taken for granted. what is noticeably absent in the earlier work on childhood, whether produced by anthropologists, sociologists, or psychologists, is a concern with children as children. human agency is almost entirely absent; even where the cultural context is taken seriously, children are seen as being at its mercy. in recent decades, and especially since the 1970s, the study of childhood has taken a new direction that follows the larger critiques and debates in the social sciences. An important critical work was published in 1990 by Allison James and Alan prout, Constructing and Reconstructing Childhood, which took upon itself the task of theoretically rethinking children and childhood. James and prout, in their introduction and their chapter for the volume (1990a, 3–5, 8–9; 1990b), argued persuasively that children are not passive members of society but actively construct their own social worlds and participate in them; therefore, there is a need for researchers to explore children’s lives from the children’s own perspectives and not simply from the perspectives of adults. Methodologically, they argued for situated, contextualized, ethnographic studies of children that would reveal their day-to-day experiences. Children Constructing ethnic identities in Cyprus I 123 several researchers have...