Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia, 1870-1990University of Chicago Press, 2009 M02 15 - 358 pages Deftly combining archival sources with evocative life histories, Anastasia Karakasidou brings welcome clarity to the contentious debate over ethnic identities and nationalist ideologies in Greek Macedonia. Her vivid and detailed account demonstrates that contrary to official rhetoric, the current people of Greek Macedonia ultimately derive from profoundly diverse ethnic and cultural backgrounds. Throughout the last century, a succession of regional and world conflicts, economic migrations, and shifting state formations has engendered an intricate pattern of population movements and refugee resettlements across the region. Unraveling the complex social, political, and economic processes through which these disparate peoples have become culturally amalgamated within an overarchingly Greek national identity, this book provides an important corrective to the Macedonian picture and an insightful analysis of the often volatile conjunction of ethnicities and nationalisms in the twentieth century. "Combining the thoughtful use of theory with a vivid historical ethnography, this is an important, courageous, and pioneering work which opens up the whole issue of nation-building in northern Greece."—Mark Mazower, University of Sussex |
Contents
| 1 | |
The Politics of Reading Writing and Telling of History | 29 |
Processes of Consolidation and Change Following the Advent of Greek Rule | 140 |
Reconstructin the Passages to Nationhood | 218 |
Afterword | 228 |
Genealogies | 240 |
Tables | 247 |
Notes | 262 |
Bibliography | 307 |
Index | 321 |
Other editions - View all
Fields of Wheat, Hills of Blood: Passages to Nationhood in Greek Macedonia ... Anastasia N. Karakasidou No preview available - 1997 |
Common terms and phrases
activities administrative Aghia Anna aghora agricultural Ambar-Koy Artousis Asia Minor Assiriotes Assiros Assiros township Assiros village Asteriou became Bulgarian Exarchate Byzantine chiftlik Christian church claimed cultivated cultural donia Dragoumis Drimos East Thracian economic elite established ethnic Examili families former FYROM Gnoina grazing lands Greece Greek Macedonia Greek national Greek-speaking Guneyna Guvezna Guvezna/Assiros Halepis Hellenism inhabitants Ioannis Metaxas Karakasidou Kilkis Krithia labor landowners Langadhas basin language liberation Macedonian Struggle maintained married Mavrorahi merchants Muslim n/a n/a n/a nation-building nation-state national consciousness national identity Orthodox Otmanli Ottoman Ottoman Empire Palehora partisans Pashos Paskhalina Patriarchate percent political Pontic population present-day priest redistribution refugees region reportedly residents ritual rural Sapountzis Sarakatsan Second Balkan War Serbia Serres settlement sharecroppers Slavic Slavic-speakers social sponsor stremmata Stylianos teacher Thessaloniki Thessaly Thrace Thracian tion township township council Trikala tsorbadjidhes tsorbadjis Turkish Turks Vertiskos Vlahs Vranas wakf wheat
Popular passages
Page 164 - The presence and circulation of a representation (taught by preachers, educators, and popularizers as the key to socioeconomic advancement) tells us nothing about what it is for its users. We must first analyze its manipulation by users who are not its makers.
Page 228 - It is the establishment of an anonymous, impersonal society, with mutually substitutable atomized individuals, held together above all by a shared culture of this kind, in place of a previous complex structure of local groups, sustained by folk cultures reproduced locally and idiosyncratically by the micro-groups themselves.
Page 25 - It is nationalism which engenders nations, and not the other way round. Admittedly, nationalism uses the pre-existing, historically inherited proliferation of cultures or cultural wealth, though it uses them very selectively, and it most often transforms them radically.
Page 228 - The basic deception and self-deception practised by nationalism is this: nationalism is, essentially, the general imposition of a high culture on society, where previously low cultures had taken up the lives of the majority, and in some cases of the totality, of the population.
Page 26 - Indian nationalism" is synonymous with "Hindu nationalism" is not the vestige of some premodern religious conception. It is an entirely modern, rationalist, and historicist idea. Like other modern ideologies, it allows for a central role of the state in the modernization of society and strongly defends the state's unity and sovereignty. Its appeal is not religious but political. In this sense, the framework of its reasoning is entirely secular.
Page 89 - This recent genealogy of the idea explains why nationalism is now viewed as a dark, elemental, unpredictable force of primordial nature threatening the orderly calm of civilized life.
Page 17 - They search backwards over the hills and valleys of historical events to trace the inexorable route of a given (or "chosen") population to the destiny of their national enlightenment and liberation. They transform history into national history, legitimizing the existence of a nation-state in the present-day by teleologically reconstructing its reputed past. Pedigrees of national descent are constructed, refined, and lengthened, and the ancestors of a "nation" become a vehicle for majority-group legitimation,...
Page 79 - A Greek can never bring himself to regard the Bulgarians as a race with the same right and title as his own. They are simply excommunicated schismatics whose contumacy must be reduced by any means available.
Page 162 - Homogenization, 1913-1940 [We] listened to the president articulate to the council that in accordance with the decision [#122770] of Mr. Minister, General Governor of Macedonia, all municipal and township councils would forbid, through [administrative] decision, the speaking of other idioms of obsolete languages within the area of their jurisdiction for the reconstitution of a universal language and our national glory. [The president] suggested that [the] speaking of different idioms, foreign [languages]...
Page 54 - Community [U]ntil the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Slavs, Greeks and Vlahs still constituted one Christian community, united in the Rum millet. A peasant felt himself first of all as a member of a family, a village community and maybe a small culturally distinguishable unit, and, secondly Rum.
References to this book
Anthropology Through a Double Lens: Public and Personal Worlds in Human Theory Daniel Touro Linger No preview available - 2005 |
Mediating the Nation: News, Audiences and the Politics of Identity Mirca Madianou No preview available - 2005 |