Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe: The Social Life of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus

New York: Berghahn Books, 2008. Soft cover. Near Fine. 8vo. Reprint. Soft cover, xxx, [2], 280 p.p. B&W illustrations in-text plus [8] p.p. plates of B&W photos. Some creasing to joints and front cover, and bumping to spine head, on page has large crease, else fine. The war between Greece and Turkey ended in 1922 in what Greeks call the 'Asia Minor Catastrophe,' a disaster greater than the fall of Constantinople in 1453, for it marked the end of Hellenism in Asia Minor. In the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, the first ever compulsory exchange of populations was endorsed - 'ethnic cleansing' by another name - 350,000 Muslims were expelled and over one million Orthodox Christians entered Greece, increasing its population by nearly a quarter in two years. Based on Renee Hirschon's extensive fieldwork, this ethnography of Kokkinia - an urban quarter in Piraeus - reveals that its inhabitants, fifty years after settlement, had a marked sense of identity separate from that of the 'local Greeks' with whom, however, they shared a common religion, language and culture. The book deals with the cultural continuity and adaptation, the role of memory, patterns of social and economic organization, neighbourhood and gender roles, and the influence of cultural values on the symbolism and use of physical space.