Book Reviews
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2435.1989.tb00474.x |
| Date | 01 December 1989 |
| Published date | 01 December 1989 |
Book
Reviews
HIRSCHON,R.Heirs
of
the Greek Catastrophe.
The Social
Lge
of
Asia Minor Refigees in
Piraeus. Oxford: Clarendon,
1989, 280
pp.,
E
35.00.
ISBN
:
0-19-823404-X
The experience of Asia Minor Greeks merits
special attention since it provides a unique
opportunity for long-term case studies of Greek
refugees within Greek society. Understanding
this experience offers meaningful insights into
the ways in which uprooted people cope with
challenges of survival, with material
deprivation and with social and personal
disruption. In this context, Hirschon’s book on
‘Heirs of the Greek Catastrophe. The Social Life
of Asia Minor Refugees in Piraeus’ has strong
parallels with the critical problems of displaced
populations in many parts of the world today. It
is therefore a valuable source for policy
planners, educators and social researchers.
The study conducted in the early
1970’s
is
mainly based on the author’s field observations.
It is an ethnography of people in Kokkinia, an
urban low-income quarter of Piraeus. This was
one of the largest refugee quarters established in
1923,
after the war between Greece and Turkey
and the mandatory exchange of population
between the two countries. This came to be
knowii by the Greeks as the ‘Asia Minor
Catastrophe’; a disaster equaled to the fall of
Constantinople in
1453.
It marked the end of
the Hellenic presence in Asia Minor where
Greek civilization had existed over three
thousand years.
Although there are given far reaching
consequences for Greece and Turkey,
surprisingly few studies exist about the
settlement of these drastically uprooted people.
Hirschon’s book is a contribution to this
direction. She observes the daily life of refugee
men and women fifty years after their
settlement. In interpreting social life the author
uses a combined approach
:
she takes account of
political and social events taking place in the
Greek Metropolitan Society over a period of
five or six decades, while the social and cultural
affiliations of the Asia Minor Greek Society
provide a key to resolving some of the
contradictory features present in the Kokkinia
area.
Although the study was camed out almost two
decades ago, some ofthe points discussed about
the initial conditions of the refugees’
adjustment in Greece, the poor housing and the
inadequate public provision still remain largely
true. Like all forcibly uprooted people, the
experie!ce of Asia Minor Greek refugees in the
Greek’ state, was one of dispossesion, fear,
poverty, social and economic marginalization.
One ofthe main questions asked in this study is
how, under such circumstances, these people
managed to reorganize their lives and evolve
into a strong cohesive group. In exploring the
factors which influenced this process, the
author stresses the refugees’ strong historical
tradition and their experience
as
an influential
minority group in the Ottoman Empire.
The Asia Minor Greeks had lived in a society
which preserved
a
continuity with its
predecessor, the Byzantine Empire, on the one
hand, and allowed for the coexistence and
promotion of cultural autonomy, on the other.
Thus when they came to the metropolitan
Greece, they brought with them a strong sense
of cultural and social identity which, under the
circumstances, became a source of strength for
their lives.
Hirschon argues that in the conscious retention
of a separate identity through three generations,
one can see a limiting case, a minority group
of
603
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