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Articles

No. 2(3) (2012): Ancient Sources of the Social Sciences

Local Communities in Greece Between Religion and Life

  • Ewa Nowicka
Submitted
10 June 2020
Published
01-11-2012

Abstract

The article shows certain aspect of Greek culture, which presents in its intensive manifestations a pattern particularly interesting for an anthropologist. It explores secrets and details of local and territorial (village or island) vital for the understanding of the Greek society social bonds on the territory of Greece. Emil Durkheim would have found in the analysis a perfect illustration of his statement that religion is there, where the society worships itself. The article contains a reflection of a social anthropologist on religious rituality in contemporary Greece both in the rural and municipal environment on the territory of Aegean Macedonia. Empirical material was collected during several years of fieldwork in the years 2005-2010. The subject of the analysis is an attitude towards religion, participation in the religious rituals of certain particular category of Greeks, return migrants who have come back (sometimes in the second generation) to the home country after a long period of political migration in Poland and other communist countries. Among the researchees described as Greek, especially in the northern Greece, they are ethnic/national minorities. Religious rituals in the villages of Aegean Macedonia (Loutra) and Epir (Samarina) have been analyzed as well as the behavior of the participants of such rituals like baptisms, post-funeral ceremonies in different villages. The conclusion is the statement about unity, solidarity and social bonds. A common celebration, being together, performing of ritual activities, which are part of religious celebration, go further into mundane life, fulfill integrative functions. This justificates the usage of Durkheim’s sociocentric concept of religion.

References

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