Hostname: page-component-5c6d5d7d68-thh2z Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-08-20T20:11:05.989Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

‘That's the way they do it in Europe’: Redefining Culture in a Greek Border Region

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2012

Dimitris Gintidis
Dimitris Gintidis*
Affiliation:
Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies, University of Macedonia, Spartis 49, 546 40 Thessaloniki, Greece. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article aims at portraying the symbolic and material impact of cross-border and entrepreneurial EU-funded projects on the local public sphere of Evros, a Greek region bordering with Turkey. Often construed as ‘European policies’ at the local level, such projects reflect a complex interaction between the ‘European’, the ‘national’ and the ‘local’. In order to unravel the dynamics of such interaction, I focus on the case of local cultural associations. These associations stood as typical bearers of a romantic nationalist discourse; this local enactment of Greek nationalism was also related with specific forms of symbolic capital, through ostensibly ‘disinterested patriotic action’. The introduction of EU-funded projects in the local public sphere challenged such historically constructed practices. At the same time, these projects were mediated by the representatives of the Greek State and were locally appropriated as a reformulation of older national policies and funding channels. The article argues that the implementation of those projects brought about two significant changes in the local public sphere: the dissemination of cross-border policies throughout the 1990s and 2000s, and the growing importance of a new, market-oriented perception of public action, in local cultural associations.

Type
Focus: Complexities of ‘Europe’
Information
European Review , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , 04 January 2012 , pp. 43 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © Academia Europaea 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References and Notes

1. The policies of this modernising faction, as well as the subsequent changes in Greek society have attracted an important amount of scholarly interest and work. See Featherstone, K. (ed.) (2006) Politics and Policy in Greece (London and New York: Routledge); and Sakis Karagiorgas Foundation Conference Proceedings (2000) Domes kai Scheseis Exousias sti Simerini Ellada (Athens: Idrima Saki Karagiorga); Sakis Karagiorgas Foundation Conference Proceedings (2002) Ideologika Revmata kai Taseis tis Dianoisis sti Simerini Ellada (Athens: Idrima Saki Karagiorga).Google Scholar
2.Simitis, K. (2005) Politiki gia mia Dimiourgiki Ellada, 1996–2004 (Athens: Polis). At this point, I should note that the dominant right-wing party (Nea Dimokratia) also adjusted itself more or less to the standards of a moderate liberal policy, either as the Official Opposition, or later on, as the governing party.Google Scholar
3.Shore, C. (2000) Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration (London/New York: Routledge), pp. 84, 85; also M. Abélès (1994) I Kathimerini Zoi sto Evropaiko Koinovoulio (Athens: Papadimas); N. Rose (2006) Governing ‘advanced’ liberal democracies. In: A. Sharma and A. Gupta (eds) The Anthropology of the State: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell).Google Scholar
4.Herzfeld, M. (1995) Hellenism and occidentalism: the permutations of performance in Greek bourgeois identity. In: J. Carrier (ed.) Occidentalism: Images of the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press), pp. 218, 219; also M. Herzfeld (1998) I Anthropologia Mesa apo ton Kathrefti (Athens: Alexandreia); J. Borneman and N. Fowler (1997) Europeanization. Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, 487–514.Google Scholar
5.Mitchell, J. (2002) Ambivalent Europeans: Ritual, Memory and the Public Sphere in Malta (New York and London: Routledge), pp. 1, 27.Google Scholar
6.Andrikopoulou, E. (1994) Perifereiaki Politiki sti Dekaetia tou 1980 kai Prooptikes. In: P. Getimis, G. Kafkalas and N. Maravegias (eds) Astiki kai Perifereiaki Anaptixi (Athens: Themelio).Google Scholar
7. This new context of action seemed to apply in other Greek and European regions as well, as described in Green, S. (2005) Notes from the Balkans: Locating Marginality and Ambiguity on the Greek-Albanian Border (Princeton: Princeton University Press); and M. Abélès (1994) I Kathimerini Zoi sto Evropaiko Koinovoulio (Athens: Papadimas).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
8. The name of this Union has been modified for the purposes of this article.Google Scholar
9.Tsibiridou, F. (1995) I Ethniki Ideologia stis Sillogikes Anaparastaseis. Emfyloi Roloi kai Sexoualikotita Mesa apo to Logo ton Politistikon Foreon mias Akritikis Polis. Dini, 8, 153–179.Google Scholar
10.Bourdieu, P. (1980) Le Sens Pratique (Paris: Les Éditions du Minuit); and P. Bourdieu (2000) Praktikoi Logoi gia ti Theoria tis Drasis (Athens: Plethron).Google Scholar
11.Bourdieu, P. (1997) Méditations pascaliennes (Paris: Seuil); also J. Parry and M. Bloch (1989) Introduction: money and the morality of exchange. In: J. Parry and M. Bloch (eds) Money and the Morality of Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); J. Parry (1989) On the moral perils of exchange. In: J. Parry and M. Bloch (eds) Money and the Morality of Exchange (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press); A. Hirschman (1997) The Passions and the Interests (Princeton: Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
12. In its first form, culture was a privileged field for the symbolic reproduction of urban elites. However, even in the later left-wing cultural mobilisation or the rural dissemination of ‘folk’ cultural activities, one could note the persistence of such concepts. See Gintidis, D. (2009) ‘Koinonies Politon’: Metshimatismoi tis Syllogikotitas sti Dimosia Sfaira tis Thrakis. Peri Thrakis, 6, 179–218.Google Scholar
13.Shore, C. and Wright, S. (1997) Policy: a new field of anthropology. In: C. Shore and S. Wright (eds) Anthropology of Policy (London and New York: Routledge), p. 20.Google Scholar
14.Sampson, S. (1996) The social life of projects. In: C. Hann and E. Dunn (eds) Civil Society: Challenging Western Models (London: Routledge).Google Scholar
15. The use of binary classifications such as ‘money’/‘morality’, ‘economy’/‘culture’, or ‘cross-border’/‘patriotic’, reflected generalised dualist perceptive schemes that seem to define symbolic strategies and practices in the Greek national society, as well as in Greek local communities. See Herzfeld, M. (1998) I Anthropologia Mesa apo ton Kathrefti (Athens: Alexandreia); E. Papataxiarchis (1998) Eisagogi stin Elliniki Ekdosi: Ethnografia kai Aftognosia. In: M. Herzfeld (ed.) I Anthropologia Mesa apo ton Kathrefti (Athens: Alexandreia); E. Papataxiarchis (1994) Émotions et Stratégies d'Autonomie en Grèce Égéenne. Terrain, 22. Online: http://terrain.revues.org/index3081.html (accessed 11 January 2009). Such dualisms should not be seen as fixed and limited entities, but in many cases they exist as communicating perceptive schemes. For example, local politicians or members of cultural associations could often combine the public rhetoric of ‘Europeanisation’, ‘new economy’ and ‘cross-border cooperation’ along with the private rhetoric of ‘national pride’, ‘national defence and self-preservation’. However, fluid as it may be, the logic of these dualisms remains practical. In any case, one set of ideas and social norms stands out as the ‘rule’ in relation to which these dualisms are enacted, as a strategy of adjustment or refutation. And this rule is almost always politically and nationally produced.Google Scholar
16.Verdery, K. (1995) ‘Caritas’: and the reconceptualization of money in Romania. Anthropology Today, 11(1), 3–7.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
17.Shore, C. (2000) Building Europe: The Cultural Politics of European Integration (London/New York: Routledge), p. 26.Google Scholar
18. European money was rightly or wrongly deemed as a kind of ‘European gift’, thus tending at reproducing the symbolic dominance of the idea of Europe. Social agents perceived these programmes as an analogy of the relation of Greece to Europe, a relation of receiver to donor. The political and symbolic functions of financial aid, on a local, national or European scale, are a very interesting subject of research, which I tried to include in my doctoral research and thesis. However, in this article I will just limit myself to pointing out European economic funds are a particular form of exchange that implicates ‘gifts’, as well as ‘moral obligations to reciprocate’.Google Scholar
19.Shore, C. and Wright, S. (1997) Policy: a new field of anthropology. In: C. Shore and S. Wright (eds) Anthropology of Policy (London and New York: Routledge).Google Scholar
20.Borneman, J. and Fowler, N. (1997) Europeanization. Annual Review of Anthropology, 26, 489.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
21.Tsibiridou, F. (in print) Anamesa sto ‘Ethnos kai to Kratos’: I Epanadiapragmatefsi tis Atelous Schesis Politi/Kratous sti Thraki. In: E. Papataxiarchis (ed.) Anatheoriseis tou Politikou: Anthropologiki kai Istoriki Erevna stin Elliniki Koinonia (Athens: Alexandreia).Google Scholar
22. More recently, tensions between Greece and other members of the EU on the subject of national economic policy led to a certain repositioning, as short termed as this may be, of the discourse of ‘national interest’, including the partial use of the rhetoric of ‘patriotic honour’ as a response to various ‘insults’ from other European counterparts. The Greek State provides examples of various reorientations and combined uses of such ‘conflicting’ representations. Being the legitimate bearer of the nationalist rationale, the State seems, in the long term, more apt than anyone else in legitimising and naturalising such alternations in the dominant nationalist narrative. On the issue of the State's symbolic violence, see Bourdieu, P. (1997) Méditations pascaliennes (Paris: Seuil), p. 179 and 248–268. At the same time, I should emphasise the pertaining Eurocentric foundations and aspirations of the Greek State and Greek elites, which seem to be embedded in their perception of social reality, their subsequent action and this action's hegemonic limits. See M. Herzfeld (1995) Hellenism and occidentalism: the permutations of performance in Greek bourgeois identity. In: J. Carrier (ed.) Occidentalism: Images of the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press); M. Herzfeld (1998) I Anthropologia Mesa apo ton Kathrefti (Athens: Alexandreia); N. Panayotopoulos (2001) La Conversion de l’État Grec à l’Économisme Dominant. Regards Sociologiques, 21, 41–49.Google Scholar