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Literacy as Symbolic Strategy in Greece: Methodological Considerations of Topic and Place

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Michael Herzfeld
Michael Herzfeld*
Affiliation:
Indiana University
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Against reification: what is a context?

This paper provides me with an opportunity to suggest why the study of orality and literacy/literality in modern Greece has some theoretical as well as purely descriptive or local significance. For social anthropology, comparison between societies and cultures is a central task. While the study of modern Greek culture displays a remarkably persistent level of methodological introversion, its singular characteristics are very germane to the comparativist perspective. In part, this is due to the peculiar political circumstances that make the ancient forebears of the Greeks so much a part of current debates about the status of the modern culture.

Type
Articles:
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 14 , 1990 , pp. 151 - 173
Copyright
Copyright © The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1990

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