Research Project on
«Nation building and ethnographic research during the interwar»
This project is financed by the University of Macedonia Research Committee under its 4th framework (2009-2010) program of basic research funding. The 4,000 Euro funding was provided following an assessment process involving external reviewers. The project’s duration is 18 months. Assist. Professor Georgios Agelopoulos is the project’s academic coordinator.
Aims and methodology
The breakdown of the Ottoman Empire in the mid 1910s had important results in the development of social sciences in the region. Just after the Balkan Wars (1912-14) academics and policy makers turned their attention to the problem of incorporating socially, culturally, politically and economically the former Ottoman territories into their nation state structures. Part of this process involved the hybrid attempt to develop ethnological studies and the academic discipline of ethnology. Until this period, the knowledge available on the populations of the region was provided by
(a) non-academic accounts produced by military personnel, spies, merchants, local expatriates and diplomats.
(b) scholars with an academic background who traveled in these areas of the Orient and
(c) academic researchers, mainly arm-chair geographers and demographers.
- Archival research at the Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens
- Archival research at the Newspapers and Periodicals Library of the Greek Parliament
- Archival research at the Archives of the University of Athens
- A field trip in the area where J. Obrebski conducted fieldwork in the late 1920s
- A field trip in the area where K. Karavidas conducted fieldwork in the 1920s
- Αssist. Professor Georgios Agelopoulos (implementation of the research project, project coordinator, collection of primary data, writing-up of the results)
- Dr. Antonis Patrinos (development and maintenance of the internet site)
- Publications
- Georgios Agelopoulos, “Mind the gap: Attempts to introduce social anthropology in Greece during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s”, Paper presented at the conference The Rise of Anthropology ‘on the Margins of Europe,’ 1945–1991, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Haale/Saale, 9–10 March 2011).
- Agelopoulos G. 2011, ‘Contested Territories and the Quest for Ethnology: People and Places in I˙zmir 1919–22’
- Agelopoulos G. 2011, ‘Από το έθνος στην εθνολογία: η μελέτη της ετερότητας στη δεκαετία του 1920’, accepted for publication.
- Agelopoulos G., ‘Ethnography and national priorities in the post-Ottoman context’, presented at the international conference ‘Beyond Essentialisms: Challenges of Anthropology in the 21st Century’ International Conference on the Occasion of the 70th Anniversary of the Department of Ethnology and Cultural Anthropology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana
- Presentations in seminars and conferences
- Research material
Additional information on K. Karavidas and J. Obrebski is available in the files included in Galleries 1 and 3. The publications available in the folder Publications present a detailed analysis of their work.
Those wishing to study further on the above mentioned issues should consult the following references. This reading list mainly includes titles in English, French and Greek. A detailed list of references is provided in each of the papers included in the folder Publications.
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Καραβίδας, Κωσταντίνος, ‘Η πατριωτική επανάστασις και τα κόμματα’, Κοινότης (Athens 20 November 1922) Α/8, pp. 3-7.
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