Roger Just

This book comprises eight essays concerned with the ethnography of Greece, and in particular of the village of Spartokhori on the small Ionian island of Meganisi, Lefkadha, where, between 1977 and 1980, the author conducted anthropological fieldwork. For the most part, the essays focus on aspects of family, kinship and gender as they were to be found in what was, in the 1970s, a remote, rural community. Greek society has, of course, undergone profound changes over the last forty years, and these essays thus serve to document a way of life that has now virtually disappeared. Importantly, however, they also deal with the transformation of rural Greek society as it was occurring at the time. The book will appeal to social anthropologists, sociologists and historians of Modern Greece, and to anyone interested in rural Mediterranean society.

This book provides a comprehensive account of the Athenians' conception of women during the classical period of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Though nothing remains that represents the authentic voice of the women themselves, there is a wealth of evidence showing how men sought to define women. By working through a range of material, from the provisions of Athenian law through to the representations of tragedy and comedy, the author builds up, in the manner of an anthropological ethnography, a coherent and integrated picture of the Athenians' notion of `woman'.

This volume reveals the historical dynamism of what appears at first sight to be a forgotten backwater. Meganisi is one of the smallest and most remote of the Greek Ionian islands. From another point of view, it is the centre of the world, and its sailors travel literally from China to Peru while its migrants maintain familial connections from Johannesburg to Montreal. The villages of Meganisi are tightly-knit communities and this detailed ethnographic study explores the basis on which the islanders' solidarity and sense of identity are constructed andreconstructed despite population mobility and economic change: the values, sentiments and structures of kinship and family. Series Editors: Wendy James & N.J. Allen

This book provides a comprehensive account of the Athenians' conception of women during the classical period of the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Though nothing remains that represents the authentic voice of the women themselves, there is a wealth of evidence showing how men sought to define women. By working through a range of material, from the provisions of Athenian law through to the representations of tragedy and comedy, the author builds up, in the manner of an anthropological ethnography, a coherent and integrated picture of the Athenians' notion of `woman'.