D Theodossopoulos
Biographic Data
| ID | 14074 |
|---|---|
| NAME | D Theodossopoulos |
| GIVEN NAMES | D |
| FAMILY NAME | Theodossopoulos |
| SIGNATURE | THEODOSSOPOULOS D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Kent |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8453-3450 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 45 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 377 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 45 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 11 |
Editor's statement
When I wrote last year's editorial as the incoming editor, I reflected on my long connection to the JRAI – the sense of continuity held in the familiar yellow covers, and the enduring place of ethnography at the heart of our discipline. Over the past year, this connection has deepened further. Working closely with our authors, reviewers, and Editorial Board has revealed not only the strength of our existing practices, but also the possibilities t…
Editor's preface
Dialogues
On the Compositional Relationship of Text and Image in Graphic Anthropology
Graphic anthropology has grown to become a distinctive subfield at the intersection of anthropology of drawing, visual anthropology, and multimodal approaches to social research. We assess this development and identify two emerging styles of graphic anthropological practice. While some anthropologists follow the representational language of comic books and graphic novels—known as sequential art—others evade sequential framing, arranging images an…
De-essentializing hegemony, with Gramsci, Williams, and Hall
Departing from the temptation of treating the concept of hegemony as a singular, essentialized regime, or as a term synonymous with domination, the article invites attention to its dynamic and multilayered meaning. A more nuanced treatment of the concept brings forward its plural and contested connotations. In the analysis presented here I foreground the benefits of using the concept in processual terms, as well as the internal differentiation be…
A statement from the incoming editor
Graphic Ethnography
The entry explores the growing social scientific field of graphic ethnography. It locates its development in the second decade of the twenty‐first century and outlines some of its incipient characteristics. The entry also reviews the variation in structure and form of graphic‐ethnographic practice and identifies some of its multiple affordances. This examination is undertaken with an eye toward evaluating the analytical versus descriptive potenti…
Tourism Imaginaries
It is hard to imagine tourism without the creative use of seductive, as well as restrictive, imaginaries about peoples and places. These socially shared assemblages are collaboratively produced and consumed by a diverse range of actors around the globe. As a nexus of social practices through which individuals and groups establish places and peoples as credible objects of tourism, “tourism imaginaries” have yet to be fully explored. Presenting inn…
Afterword
Troubles with Turtles
The people of Vassilikos, farmers and tourist entrepreneurs on the Greek island of Zakynthos, are involved in a bitter environmental dispute concerning the conservation of sea turtles. Against the environmentalists' practices and ideals they set their own culture of relating to the land, cultivation, wild and domestic animals. Written from an anthropological perspective, this book puts forward the idea that a thorough study of indigenous cultures…
Introduction
Anthropology begins in the encounter with the ‘exotic’: what stands outside of—and challenges—conventional or established understandings. This volume confronts the distortions of orientalism, ethnocentrism, and romantic nostalgia to expose exoticism, defined as the construction of false and unsubstantiated difference. Its aim is to re-found the importance of the exotic in the development of anthropological knowledge and to overcome methodological…
Introduction
Los Emberá, turismo y arqueología indígena
In this article we discuss the interest of the Emberá (an Amerindian indigenous group) in collecting knowledge about material remains of the past—such as colonial and pre-colonial ceramic fragments – that are easily found in Eastern Panama. We situate this interest of the Emberá (and their desire to learn more about the past) within the context of indigenous tourism, which has inspired the articulation of new narratives about Emberá history and i…
Thinking about generations, conjuncturally
Since the early twentieth century, generation has been a recurrent concept in social analysis. In spite of successive bouts of critique and periods of relative neglect, the category has never been abandoned. In this article, drawing inspiration from a broad range of thinkers - such as José Ortega y Gasset, Karl Mannheim, Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall - we review and fine tune our conceptual toolkit regarding g…
The moment ethnography becomes past
This chapter uses the analytical notion of ‘ethnographic nostalgia’ to make visible some of the time distortions effected by what is written before. It defines ethnographic nostalgia as a desire to locate those we study within an ethnographic field, our longing and aspiration to capture the ethnographic present as this has been described by a particular academic literature. The chapter is concerned with the biases generated by ethnographic nostal…
Care, Order and Usefulness
This chapter traces the non-articulated aspect of the human—animal relationship as it becomes apparent in Vassilikos, a community on the island of Zakynthos in south-west Greece, and places the interaction of the farmers with their animals in its meaningful context: one that involves care, reciprocity and a fundamental conceptualization of the place and purpose of each living organism on the farm. Questions regarding the human—animal interaction …
Solidarity Dilemmas in Times of Austerity
This article introduces an autobiographical analytical tool that aims to elucidate the complexity and interweaving of opposing ideological positions as these emerge in the field and while writing ethnography. The technique introduced makes visible the split of the author's identity into two: between that of a hard and a soft Marxist, where each authorial self resonates with a particular local perspective. The split and those who have stimulated i…
Iphigenia's sacrifice
Iphi, an unemployed actor in austerity-ridden Greece, imagines a theatre adaptation of a classic tragedy,Iphigenia at Aulis, in which the heroine is sacrificed on the altar of austerity by politicians. While writing her playscript, Iphi has a dream: she is taken to the sacrificial altar, not by politicians, but by her own parents, the generation who lived through the affluent years before austerity. Iphi's generational-analogical thinking introdu…
Indigenous Tourism Movements
Indigenous Tourism Movements explores Indigenous identity using “movement” as a metaphor, drawing on case studies from throughout the world including Botswana, Canada, Chile, Panama, Tanzania, and the United States.
Graphic review
Exoticisation Undressed
Exoticisation Undressed is an innovative ethnography that makes visible the many layers through which our understandings of indigenous cultures are filtered and their inherent power to distort and refract understanding. The book focuses in detail on the clothing practices of the Emberá in Panama, an Amerindian ethnic group, who have gained national and international visibility through their engagement with indigenous tourism. The very act of gain…
On Ethnographic Nostalgia
Afterword
Exoticisation Undressed
Indigenous-and-modern Emberá clothes
The concluding chapter brings together some of the theoretical concepts introduced earlier in the book in a unified analysis. It employs the notion of indigenous disemia to describe the simultaneity of indigenous-and-modern elements in the identity of the Emberá. It also employes the notion of ‘ethnographic nostalgia’ as a vehicle to problematise the authentic and the exotic, as these are conceived in relation to Emberá representation. Every new …
Infuriated with the Infuriated
The austerity measures introduced as a response to the recent financial crisis in Greece have inspired a wave of discontent among local Greek actors. The latter declared themselves as "indignant" or "infuriated" with the austerity measures. Their indignation, as I demonstrate in this article, has been expressed in terms of diverse arguments that have either encouraged public protest or served as a critique of the protest in culturally intimate co…
Philanthropy or solidarity? Ethical dilemmas about humanitarianism in crisis-afflicted Greece
That philanthropy perpetuates the conditions that cause inequality is an old argument shared by thinkers such as Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde and Slavoj Zizek. I recorded the same argument in conversations regarding a growing humanitarian concern in austerity-ridden Greece. At the local level a number of solidarity initiatives provide the most impoverished families with humanitarian help. Some citizens participate in such initiatives wholeheartedly, wh…
On De-Pathologizing Resistance
This introductory essay draws attention to two processes, the pathologization and exoticization of resistance. Working independently or in parallel, these two processes silence resistance by depoliticizing it as illogical or idealizing it in out-worldly terms. In both cases, resistance is caricatured as abnormal or exotic and distanced from current political priorities. I argue that analytical de-pathologization and de-exoticization of resistance…
The Ambivalence of Anti-Austerity Indignation in Greece
This article engages with a contradiction that can help us appreciate the ambiguity and complexity of indirect resistance as this is articulated in informal everyday contexts: many citizens in Greece boldly challenge the antisocial austerity measures that have plagued their lives, highlighting how these represent a hegemonic imposition led by foreign centres of economic power. Their anti-hegemonic critique, however, often recycles a dislike for f…
Laying Claim to Authenticity
The introduction to this special collection examines five dilemmas about the use of the concept of authenticity in anthropological analysis. These relate to 1) the expectation of a singular authenticity "deep" in oneself or beyond the surface of social reality, 2) the contradictions emerging from the opposition of authenticity with inauthenticity, 3) the irony of the notion of invention of tradition (which deconstructs, but also offends), 4) the …
They are Taking Our Culture Away
This article is concerned with the efforts of a Garifuna community in Honduras to claim a space in the growing local tourist economy. Its inhabitants maintain that they suffer a form of culture loss because they do not control the commodification of their culture through tourism. By examining the local perspective, we argue that cultural performances could be treated as cultural property and consumed by tourists in a context of mutual exchange as…
Emberá Indigenous Tourism and the Trap of Authenticity
Prompted by tourist commentary that describes an Emberá community in Panama as "inauthentic" or "invented," I examine the limitations of these concepts when used to refer to cultural practices of indigenous communities. To escape from a limiting, singular vision of authenticity, I argue, attention should be paid to the multiple and overlapping meanings of the authentic as these are negotiated in particular contexts. In the case of Emberá indigeno…
Rearranging solidarity
In the spring of 1999, after escalating tensions in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, NATO went to war against Serbia. This Western intervention was the object of heated debate in various constituencies around the world: within Yugoslavia, Kosovo's majority Albanian population rejoiced in their possible liberation from Serbian oppression, while Serbs questioned the legality of international involvement within a sovereign state. In Europe and Ameri…
The Performance of Anxiety
Thinking about generations, conjuncturally
Since the early twentieth century, generation has been a recurrent concept in social analysis. In spite of successive bouts of critique and periods of relative neglect, the category has never been abandoned. In this article, drawing inspiration from a broad range of thinkers - such as José Ortega y Gasset, Karl Mannheim, Antonio Gramsci, Pierre Bourdieu, Raymond Williams and Stuart Hall - we review and fine tune our conceptual toolkit regarding g…
Solidarity Dilemmas in Times of Austerity
This article introduces an autobiographical analytical tool that aims to elucidate the complexity and interweaving of opposing ideological positions as these emerge in the field and while writing ethnography. The technique introduced makes visible the split of the author's identity into two: between that of a hard and a soft Marxist, where each authorial self resonates with a particular local perspective. The split and those who have stimulated i…
The Turks and Their Nation in the Worldview of Greeks in Patras
In this article, the inhabitants of Patras, a town in Peloponnese, discuss their views about the Turks, the most representative ethnic Other in Greece. They remember their childhood attitudes towards the Turks and compare them to the opinions they currently hold. In most cases they feel the need to rationalize their mistrust towards the state of Turkey and their use of overtly negative stereotypes to describe its people. They even appear willing …
Introduction
Greek views of their Turkish neighbours draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources. These include perceptions of resemblance and difference, metaphors of inclusion and exclusion, ideas promoted by national education, adaptations of history, painful personal memories, and experiences of friendly contact. This introductory chapter explores these themes as they emerge in the anthropological literature and suggests that the notion of the general…
Others' Others
Stereotypes, in liberal thought, are objects of alarm. As Maryon McDonald has described, since the seminal work of Walter Lippman (1922) and the empirical studies pioneered by Katz and Braly (1933
Indigenous attire, exoticization, and social change
In the final quarter of the twentieth century, the Emberá in Panama abandoned their traditional attire in favour of Western clothes. Recently, however, the introduction of indigenous tourism in the country has encouraged a positive re-evaluation of Emberá traditional attire and enhanced its visibility nationally and internationally. Such transformations in Emberá dress - both the disregard for and re-evaluation of it - can shed some light on the …
Iphigenia's sacrifice
Iphi, an unemployed actor in austerity-ridden Greece, imagines a theatre adaptation of a classic tragedy,Iphigenia at Aulis, in which the heroine is sacrificed on the altar of austerity by politicians. While writing her playscript, Iphi has a dream: she is taken to the sacrificial altar, not by politicians, but by her own parents, the generation who lived through the affluent years before austerity. Iphi's generational-analogical thinking introdu…
The Pace of the Work and the Logic of the Harvest
This article considers the meaning of work for women (and some men) in the olive harvest in a Greek island community. Household economic priorities and a spirit of cooperation permeate the harvesting practice in which women (and men) perform hard manual labour. Women protagonists of the olive harvest explain their commitment to this work by reference to their desire to participate in collective household undertakings. Corporate, family-oriented u…
De-essentializing hegemony, with Gramsci, Williams, and Hall
Departing from the temptation of treating the concept of hegemony as a singular, essentialized regime, or as a term synonymous with domination, the article invites attention to its dynamic and multilayered meaning. A more nuanced treatment of the concept brings forward its plural and contested connotations. In the analysis presented here I foreground the benefits of using the concept in processual terms, as well as the internal differentiation be…
The Pace of the Work and the Logic of the Harvest
This article considers the meaning of work for women (and some men) in the olive harvest in a Greek island community. Household economic priorities and a spirit of cooperation permeate the harvesting practice in which women (and men) perform hard manual labour. Women protagonists of the olive harvest explain their commitment to this work by reference to their desire to participate in collective household undertakings. Corporate, family-oriented u…
Memories Cast in Stone
Memories Cast in Stone: The Relevance of the Past in Everyday Life. E. David Sutton. Oxford: Berg, 1998. xi. 241 pp., map, illustrations, notes, references, index
The Performance of Anxiety
Rearranging solidarity
In the spring of 1999, after escalating tensions in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo, NATO went to war against Serbia. This Western intervention was the object of heated debate in various constituencies around the world: within Yugoslavia, Kosovo's majority Albanian population rejoiced in their possible liberation from Serbian oppression, while Serbs questioned the legality of international involvement within a sovereign state. In Europe and Ameri…
Others' Others
Stereotypes, in liberal thought, are objects of alarm. As Maryon McDonald has described, since the seminal work of Walter Lippman (1922) and the empirical studies pioneered by Katz and Braly (1933
They are Taking Our Culture Away
This article is concerned with the efforts of a Garifuna community in Honduras to claim a space in the growing local tourist economy. Its inhabitants maintain that they suffer a form of culture loss because they do not control the commodification of their culture through tourism. By examining the local perspective, we argue that cultural performances could be treated as cultural property and consumed by tourists in a context of mutual exchange as…
The Turks and Their Nation in the Worldview of Greeks in Patras
In this article, the inhabitants of Patras, a town in Peloponnese, discuss their views about the Turks, the most representative ethnic Other in Greece. They remember their childhood attitudes towards the Turks and compare them to the opinions they currently hold. In most cases they feel the need to rationalize their mistrust towards the state of Turkey and their use of overtly negative stereotypes to describe its people. They even appear willing …
Introduction
Greek views of their Turkish neighbours draw inspiration from a wide variety of sources. These include perceptions of resemblance and difference, metaphors of inclusion and exclusion, ideas promoted by national education, adaptations of history, painful personal memories, and experiences of friendly contact. This introductory chapter explores these themes as they emerge in the anthropological literature and suggests that the notion of the general…
With or Without Gringos
In local and informal contexts, Panamanians talk about the power of the United States and describe its citizens in multifaceted and complex terms. In this article I examine those views as they are articulated in informal urban settings in Panama City and in conversations with middle-class Panamanians. My respondents evaluate the US-Panama relationship and discuss individual North Americans with realism, reflecting a graceful but critical spirit o…
The Poetics of Anti-Americanism in Greece
In this article we examine the content and rationale of anti-Americanism in Greece, drawing ethnographic information from two urban centers, Patras and Volos. We pay special attention to the conspiracy theory attributes of this rhetoric, and, instead of dismissing it or seeing it primarily as a manifestation of nationalist thinking, we attempt to unpack the threads of meaning that make it so appealing in local contexts. We look in particular at t…
Dancing Cultures
Indigenous attire, exoticization, and social change
In the final quarter of the twentieth century, the Emberá in Panama abandoned their traditional attire in favour of Western clothes. Recently, however, the introduction of indigenous tourism in the country has encouraged a positive re-evaluation of Emberá traditional attire and enhanced its visibility nationally and internationally. Such transformations in Emberá dress - both the disregard for and re-evaluation of it - can shed some light on the …
Laying Claim to Authenticity
The introduction to this special collection examines five dilemmas about the use of the concept of authenticity in anthropological analysis. These relate to 1) the expectation of a singular authenticity "deep" in oneself or beyond the surface of social reality, 2) the contradictions emerging from the opposition of authenticity with inauthenticity, 3) the irony of the notion of invention of tradition (which deconstructs, but also offends), 4) the …
Emberá Indigenous Tourism and the Trap of Authenticity
Prompted by tourist commentary that describes an Emberá community in Panama as "inauthentic" or "invented," I examine the limitations of these concepts when used to refer to cultural practices of indigenous communities. To escape from a limiting, singular vision of authenticity, I argue, attention should be paid to the multiple and overlapping meanings of the authentic as these are negotiated in particular contexts. In the case of Emberá indigeno…
Infuriated with the Infuriated
The austerity measures introduced as a response to the recent financial crisis in Greece have inspired a wave of discontent among local Greek actors. The latter declared themselves as "indignant" or "infuriated" with the austerity measures. Their indignation, as I demonstrate in this article, has been expressed in terms of diverse arguments that have either encouraged public protest or served as a critique of the protest in culturally intimate co…
On De-Pathologizing Resistance
This introductory essay draws attention to two processes, the pathologization and exoticization of resistance. Working independently or in parallel, these two processes silence resistance by depoliticizing it as illogical or idealizing it in out-worldly terms. In both cases, resistance is caricatured as abnormal or exotic and distanced from current political priorities. I argue that analytical de-pathologization and de-exoticization of resistance…
The Ambivalence of Anti-Austerity Indignation in Greece
This article engages with a contradiction that can help us appreciate the ambiguity and complexity of indirect resistance as this is articulated in informal everyday contexts: many citizens in Greece boldly challenge the antisocial austerity measures that have plagued their lives, highlighting how these represent a hegemonic imposition led by foreign centres of economic power. Their anti-hegemonic critique, however, often recycles a dislike for f…
Exoticisation Undressed
Exoticisation Undressed is an innovative ethnography that makes visible the many layers through which our understandings of indigenous cultures are filtered and their inherent power to distort and refract understanding. The book focuses in detail on the clothing practices of the Emberá in Panama, an Amerindian ethnic group, who have gained national and international visibility through their engagement with indigenous tourism. The very act of gain…
On Ethnographic Nostalgia
Afterword
Exoticisation Undressed
Indigenous-and-modern Emberá clothes
The concluding chapter brings together some of the theoretical concepts introduced earlier in the book in a unified analysis. It employs the notion of indigenous disemia to describe the simultaneity of indigenous-and-modern elements in the identity of the Emberá. It also employes the notion of ‘ethnographic nostalgia’ as a vehicle to problematise the authentic and the exotic, as these are conceived in relation to Emberá representation. Every new …
Sharing Anthropological Knowledge, Decolonizing Anthropology
This chapter focuses on the indigenous identity of an Amerindian group, the Embera, and their interest in the work and that of other anthropologists. Sharing anthropological understandings about the Embera with the Embera has had a transformative effect on the author career as it has encouraged it to walk the fine line that separates engaged and academic anthropology. The interest the Embera have in ethnographic information represents a desire to…
Nostalgia, invisible clothes and hidden motivations
In this introductory chapter the reader is exposed to some of the challenges set by the Western, exoticising view of Emberá clothing. The author’s own biases are revealed to aid the deconstruction of the Western view. ‘Ethnographic nostalgia’ and ‘indigenous disemia’ are introduced as concepts that aid the analysis. The chapter also includes (a) a review of existing anthropological work on clothing, which problematises the invisibility of indigen…
Philanthropy or solidarity? Ethical dilemmas about humanitarianism in crisis-afflicted Greece
That philanthropy perpetuates the conditions that cause inequality is an old argument shared by thinkers such as Karl Marx, Oscar Wilde and Slavoj Zizek. I recorded the same argument in conversations regarding a growing humanitarian concern in austerity-ridden Greece. At the local level a number of solidarity initiatives provide the most impoverished families with humanitarian help. Some citizens participate in such initiatives wholeheartedly, wh…
Sociology (28 works) · Political science (21 works) · Law (17 works) · Aesthetics (15 works) · Art (15 works) · History (15 works) · Ethnography (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Anthropology (11 works) · Anthropological Studies and Insights (10 works)