Reviews Evthymios Papataxiarchis and Theodoros Paradellis, editors. Ευθϕμιος ÎαπαταξιάϕχηςκαιΘεόδωϕοςÎαϕαδÎ-λλης,επιμελητÎ-Ï‚,Ταυτότητεςκαι ¡ϕόλοστησϕγχϕονηΕλλάδα.ΑνθϕοιπολογικÎ-ςπϕοσεγγίσεις.Athens: Kastaniotis and the University of the Aegean. 1993. Pp. 410. 3000 drachmas. Given die large number of andiropological publications based on research conducted in Greece, remarkably few are written in Greek or translated into diat language. Therefore, many Greeks have limited access to ethnographic literature about dieir own culture. As part of an effort to increase the variety and visibility of anthropological writings within Greece, Papataxiarchis and Paradellis have published the present collection of essays on gender and Greek etiinography . The chapters were first presented at the inaugural symposium of die University of the Aegean's Department of Social Andiropology, which, like this book, is an effort designed to increase Greek participation in conducting anthropological fieldwork—or at least in appreciating what it can teach us. Most of die chapters in diis book represent attempts to tease out die ways in which behavior is determined by gender in Greece, where gender is both a cultural system of meaning and a set of social relations. Through dieir analyses of case studies in specific Greek settings, the authors show that gender has pervasive political, économie, and religious dimensions. Apart from die introductory chapter, diere are eleven contributions to die volume. Of these, five are Greek translations of chapters in Contested Identities: Gender and Kinship in Modern Greece, edited by Peter Loizos and Evthymios Papataxiarchis (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1991). The translations into Greek are well done; die writing flows while retaining die spirit and details of the original texts. For non-specialists more comfortable reading English dian Greek, Contested Identities is a wiser purchase, since die contents of the two books overlap considerably. But Ταυτότητες και φϕλο offers an equally significant contribution. The book is valuable particularly for its readability and its presentation to die wider Greek public of some of die current approaches to the andiropological study of Greece. The common denominator of most of die papers is their focus on the social construction of identity, and more specifically on die social construction of gender as a basis for identity. The audiors demonstrate diat gender is a useful organizing tool and mat it provides a helpful analytical frame for the ethnographic stories diey tell. In his introduction, Papataxiarchis acknowledges the profound influence Journal of Modem Greek Studies, Volume 12, 1994. 271 272 Reviews of feminism on anthropology's treatment of gender, makes explicit die historical and philosophical underpinnings implicit in most of the papers, and situates the papers in the wider realm of anthropology. Papataxiarchis does a good job of juxtaposing the publications in this volume with earlier publications on similar issues. The introduction would have been stronger, however, if it had stressed the interconnections among the various papers in this collection. One of the main preoccupations of foreign and native anthropologists researching Greek culture has been to explain the socially defined differences between men and women. Following a review of some of the highlights of feminist impacts on anthropology, Papataxiarchis discusses the binary concepts of (a) honor and shame, (b) public and private—the long-standing double foci of anthropological research on gender in the Mediterranean. He succeeds in documenting the progression of recent ideas without denigrating the contributions of earlier anthropologists whose work has been refined and reevaluated. Dubisch provides a good companion piece to the introduction, as she, too, considers the development of thinking about gender in the anthropology of Greece. She notes the ways in which more recent studies in this field have challenged me unconscious androcentrism characterizing most of andiropology's history. The book strikes a good balance between theorizing about gender and presenting relevant ethnographic material to document the theorizing. For example, Cowan presents a dynamic representation of different points of view within the same community, documenting disagreements within the town concerning the proper behavior of young women. The religious realm—in which women are structurally subordinate but practically expressive and powerful—is the subject of several articles, including Danforth's analysis of the Anastenaria ritual as performative dierapy for young brides overwhelmed by their husbands' family of origin. The most remarkable chapter concerned with gender and religion is one in which Iossifides examines the fictive kinship created...
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Jun 16, 2008
M O'Sullivan 
Open Access