Stavroula Pipyrou. The Grecanici of Southern Italy: Governance, Violence, and Minority Politics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. 256 pp. $59.95, cloth, ISBN 978-0-8122-4830-2.

Reviewed by Anastasia Karakasidou

Published on H-Nationalism (May, 2017)

Commissioned by Cristian Cercel (Ruhr University Bochum)

In the Grecanica area of Reggio Calabria in tion through the decades, a governance that is southern Italy resides a tiny linguistic minority based neither on domination nor on coercion, nei‐ that passionately fghts for its preservation and ther on freedom nor on consent. The author also ofcial recognition. The Grecanici are the subjects borrows, and expands, the concept of fearless of this lucid and sophisticated ethnography that governance as it pertains to unruly populations tells their stories of how they “have successfully seeking self-governance at every turn and at any crafted a place in contemporary politics through expense. Grecanici fearlessly contest and “skillful‐ minority claims, narrating how minority relations ly maneuver the intricate, multiple, and often have been turned into contexts of power, authori‐ contradictory realizations of governance” (p. 7). ty, and governance” (p. 4). Based on extensive an‐ Fearlessness, according to Foucault, is the courage thropological feldwork, the book also discusses to say anything based on qualifed knowledge (in the theoretical implications of the analytics of acts of speaking). But Pipyrou operationalizes the power and how the scales of governance are real‐ concept even further and examines it in the prac‐ ized at the intersections of local and global en‐ tices employed by Grecanici in their quest for counters. These nexuses of relatedness have fur‐ recognition. nished Grecanici with efective and afective gov‐ Up until the landslides and the forced reloca‐ ernance, especially since their forceful migration tion of the 1950s, the Grecanici lived in isolated from their rural areas to the city of Reggio Cal‐ rural areas and met all the familiar stereotypes of abria because of the landslides in the early 1950s. the derogatory dirty peasant, the second-class citi‐ It was then that they commenced systematic man‐ zen, who spoke an inferior language, which was agement of being Grecanico as a linguistic and transmitted only through familial pedagogy. The cultural asset. 1861 unifcation of the Italian nation-state meant Stavroula Pipyrou borrows from Michel Fou‐ also a process of modernization that rendered the cault the concept of governance and discusses Grecanici to live in extreme conditions of poverty, how resource management and decision making with high mortality rates and constant depopula‐ are not necessarily only in the hands of “the gov‐ tion. The Mussolini policies promoting monolin‐ ernment.” The Italian state is only one fragment gualism stigmatized the Grecanici language fur‐ of power that the Grecanici have been subjected ther, and parents started consciously avoiding to: a complex regime of truths has been in opera‐ speaking the language at home. Narratives of vic‐ H-Net Reviews timhood, bitterness, and ambivalence became tween the eighth and the sixth centuries BC. A sec‐ part of their lives: both natural disasters and po‐ ond wave of newcomers arrived in 1148, when litical disempowerment were the facts of life. Byzantine populations from the Ionian Islands Despite this social sufering and displace‐ and mainland Greece found refuge in Calabria. ment, and because of European policies, the lan‐ But, by the time of Italian unifcation, the Chris‐ guage has been revived in the past few decades: tian Orthodox denomination had been abolished “the language that once brought them shame, and the Greek language was spoken in only a now brings them recognition” (p. 13). The Gre‐ dozen villages. canici looked outside Italy to enhance their mi‐ When they moved to Reggio Calabria in 1951, nority position, since recognition now can come the Grecanici were met with hostility, and al‐ from global actors and new global frameworks of though Calabrians themselves were always con‐ representation and governance shape local partic‐ ceptualized as peripheral and oriental within the ularities. The local and the global are drawn into Italian imaginary, they thought of the Grecanici as the same fearless game. alloglot peasants. Upon their arrival in the urban In addition to the trope of victimhood, recent setting, the Grecanici lived in kinship clusters, the school education in Grecanici language changed same household usually hosting three genera‐ the ways the minority perceived itself. A certif‐ tions. They were highly endogamous, and mar‐ cate in language fuency brings recognition and riages between frst (parallel or cross) cousins even employment. But individual gains require were permitted. Although they used a bilateral constant struggle and minority members are con‐ kinship classifcation system, the transmission of stantly reminded that ofcial recognition of a lin‐ patronymic names indicates an emphasis on the guistic or ethnic minority does not necessarily patriline. Grecanici politics were based on clien‐ mean that these benefts are guaranteed. They are telistic frameworks that were (and still are) famil‐ still caught in the midst of multiple national inter‐ ial in their conceptualization. The language that ests and agendas. On the one hand, for some Ital‐ frames clientelism is that of family and kinship. ian nationalists, it has been their duty to prove For example, the name of the Calabrian Mafa, that the language and the people do not exist. Giv‐ Ndrangheta, is a word of Greek origin. Within this en the great urban-rural divide in Italy, the Gre‐ frame, women are used as a commodity to canici are seen as just local variation within the strengthen their patriline and the mafa networks. Italian nation. On the other hand, some Greek na‐ Twelve languages are ofcially recognized as tionalists, in their eforts to unite the Greek-speak‐ minority languages by the Italian state, but UN‐ ing populations around the globe, view the Gre‐ ESCO declared the Grecanico language as severely canici as part of the Greek national community endangered. There is a Greek essentialism in op‐ and maintain that they should be embraced as eration and a sorrow for the disappearance of the such. language. Greek roots mean belonging to a higher Hellenism, however, still remains a “preor‐ civilization and a lost grandeur of the past. The dained category of relatedness” (p. 10). Despite Greek Orthodox Church sporadically tried to con‐ their devoutness to Catholicism, language and his‐ vert them back to Orthodoxy by sending priests to tory defne the identity of the Grecanici. Grecani‐ conduct masses, baptisms, and marriages. Associ‐ co language has Archaic Doric, Hellenistic, Byzan‐ ations were also formed in Greece to help the Cal‐ tine, and local Romanic and Italian linguistic ele‐ abrian Greeks. While their “Greekness” might ments, revealing multiple infuences. Greek colo‐ serve as a trope in their quest for recognition, it is nization of southern Italy and Sicily took place be‐ their “fearless governance,” based on qualifed

2 H-Net Reviews knowledge that led them to challenge the political tive ground for the study of any peripheral/mar‐ status quo within Italy and the European Union. ginal group striving for recognition of a local sta‐ The early criminal anthropologist, Cesare tus in a global setting. Lambroso, who was searching for physiological determinants of human behavior, classifed them as medium in height, stubborn, wild in heart and spirit, and passionate for dominance. A postmod‐ ern “fearlessness” describes them over a century later, and although the ethnography superbly in‐ terprets their post-World War II quest for recogni‐ tion, it would have been enriched if more archival and historical sources had been discussed. For ex‐ ample, following the German neoclassical tradi‐ tion, linguist, or “archaeologist of words,” Ger‐ hard Rohlfs (1892-1986) studied the “Griko” lan‐ guage spoken in a few places in Salento and in south Calabria. His extensive historical study con‐ cluded that the vernacular is a direct descendant of the language originally spoken by the Greek colonists of Magna Grecia. This connection, how‐ ever, had been established even earlier through the work of Vito Domenico Palumbo (1857-1918), a native of the area, who envisioned reestablish‐ ing cultural contacts with mainland Greece. Fol‐ lowing the trend of nascent nationalism, he stud‐ ied folklore, mythology, and songs of his people. Pipyrou mentions all these authors but does not look closely at their contemporary relevance. How do these early and romantic ideologies in‐ form today’s activism? What role did the excava‐ tion and archaeology of ancient Greek sites play in the development and consolidation of their “otherness?” In addition, how do we compare the experience of the Calabrian Grecanici with those of Grecia Salentina, where kinship, clientelism, and the mafa might have interrelated diferently? Local issues in global stages are the main themes of this ethnography, and the author pro‐ vides an anthropological account of these contest‐ ed people through ethnographic vignettes and theoretical lucidness. It adds to the literature of the Mediterranean basin, the Balkans, and south‐ ern Europe at large. It also provides a compara‐

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Citation: Anastasia Karakasidou. Review of Pipyrou, Stavroula. The Grecanici of Southern Italy: Governance, Violence, and Minority Politics. H-Nationalism, H-Net Reviews. May, 2017.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=47709

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