Memories Cast in Stone: The Relevance of the Past in Everyday Life

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Memories Cast in Stone: The Relevance of the Past in Everyday Life. DAVID E. SUTTON. Oxford and New York: Berg (Mediterranean Series), 1998; 241 pp. Reviewed by PETER ALLEN Rhode Island College Memories Cast in Stone is an insightful and provocative book by David Sutton about the Greek island of Kalymnos and its somewhat quirky inhabitants. Unlike so many ethnographies today, it is not a reflexive work and rather than being evocative, it is highly analytical. Not that the author is entirely absent from the text, for he does inject an opinion here and there and appears as a protagonist in various anecdotes, but he is not a focal character in the overall narrative. Sutton's main concern is history and the ways in which aspects of the past impact upon and articulate with the present, resulting in he calls an ethnography of historical consciousness. The main questions asked are what does a given population believe to be the general relevance of the past for present day life, and how is this played out at the national, local and personal levels? (p. 7). Drawing on a wide variety of comparative material and theoretical perspectives, Sutton provides answers to these and other critical questions through a careful examination of select aspects of Kalymnian culture. A chapter on Kalymnian identity follows the introductory chapter on the setting and provides a useful and necessary, albeit slightly anemic, background to the rest of the book. In the succeeding chapters Sutton examines several Kalymnian customs, notably the seemingly bizarre practice (unique to Kalymnos) of throwing dynamite bombs at Easter and on other historically significant occasions such as the Rock War in April of 1935. On this occasion Kalymnian women stoned and scuffled with Italian troops (Kalymnos was still a possession of Italy at the time) to protest attempts by the Italian administration to undermine the authority of the Orthodox Church. Sutton relates these and other customs and events to aspects of Kalymnian social structure and political culture, showing how current perceptions and interpretations of the past are filtered through the screen of the present and help shape modem Kalymnian culture. In Chapter 6 he lays out the analytic and theoretical bases for the approach in Chapters 7 and 8. In them, he reverses the process of earlier chapters and demonstrates quite convincingly how the past (history) has influenced Kalymnian reactions to two contemporary events. The first is the war in Bosnia and the second, the furor in Greece over the so-called Macedonian Question (that is, Greek objections to the use of the name Macedonia by the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, still referred to as FYROM by Greeks today). Sutton rightly condemns the misguided views of Western journalists and others who write about age-old ethnic enmities and Balkan tribalism in their largely failed or inadequate attempts to convey an understanding of events in this troubled part of the world. He brings an informed and intelligent perspective to the interpretation of the war in Bosnia, also shedding light on the more recent conflict in Kosovo that occurred after this book went to press. For the most part, Sutton's analyses of the issues dealt with are successful and convincing, especially when describing and analyzing those practices and events that are unique to Kalymnos. …