Surplus, storage and status in a rural Greek community

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis study draws on a range of nineteenth- and twentieth-century ethnographic materials from an agrarian community in Greece to explore the links between a nexus of behaviours related to avoiding subsistence risk. Producing a ‘normal surplus’, along with storage strategies and the growing of a wide range of crops, was part of a mix of risk-avoidance behaviours. Ultimately, however, the success of these behaviours depended on access to sufficient agricultural land. A lack of intra-community status differentiation based on land ownership noted during ethnographic fieldwork in the later twentieth century partly resulted from two historical factors: (1) households lacking sufficient land to produce an adequate ‘normal surplus’ left the community to take up other lower status activities in the wider (‘complex’) society of Greece; (2) wealthier households, unable to generate substantial wealth from sales of agricultural surpluses beyond the community, sold their property to generate capital for participation in other economic activities elsewhere.