disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory Volume 10 childhood Article 8 4-15-2001 Being One and More than One: Greek Cypriot Children and Ethnic Identity in the Flow of Everyday Life Spyros Spyrou Cyprus College, Cyprus DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.10.08 Follow this and additional works at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure Part of the Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Spyrou, Spyros (2001) "Being One and More than One: Greek Cypriot Children and Ethnic Identity in the Flow of Everyday Life," disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory: Vol. 10 , Article 8. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13023/disclosure.10.08 Available at: https://uknowledge.uky.edu/disclosure/vol10/iss1/8 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory. Questions about the journal can be sent to [email protected] Spyros Spyrou Being One and More than One: Greek Cypriot Children and Ethnic Identity in the Flow Of Everyday Life Introduction I n r •cenl y '<HS, lhe study of childhood as a social phenomenon has gained increasing at­ lenlion from sociologists, anthropologists, and historians. Theoretically, the study of childhood has moved away from slruclural explanations lhal a~':>umed children lo be pm,sive and largely al lhe mercy of cullural forces and towards theo­ retical paradigms thal see children as social ac­ tors engaged in the production and reproduc­ tion of cullure. A particularly influential work in lhe fie ld of childhood studies, which set as its goal lo lh ,orelically rethink childhood, was lhe edited volume Co11structi11g n11rl Rcco 11 structi11g C/1ilrf/10orf: Co11te111pornry Issues in tlie Sociologicnl Study of C/iilrf/1ood (James and Prout). The con­ lribulors lo the volume buill on previous work and allempled lo problemali7e childhood as a category by ilualing il in pecific ocial, cul­ tu ral, and his torical conlexls. In their introduc­ tio n lo lhe volu me, the editor argued for the @ 2001 dlsClosure: 8 need lo e a mine child hood as a social construc­ Journal of social theory tion a nd not as a na tural category, and lo look at (10). Committee on Social il in rela tion lo olher ocial variable such as Theory, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY class, gender, a nd ethnicity. They also argued tha t children and childhood are constituted by d ifferent discourse thal are in lurn consliluted 73 Spyrou Being One and More than One by children's lives. The new theoretical emphasis was to be on and poem interpretation were also us~d as well as a variety of sort­ children's daily lives in context. Similarly, the methodological call was ing and ranking techniques where children were asked to sort and for ethnographic studies of childhood that would giv a voice lo chil­ rank countries and ethnic groups (Spyrou). dren and describe their lives as they are lived in specific socio-cultural Education in Cyprus is the responsibility of the Minislr.y of Edu­ contexts (James and Prout 3-5, 8-9; see abo James, Jenks and Prout}. cation and Culture. It is highly centralized and both :urncula and Since then several studies have contributed in this direction textbooks are centrally prescribed for all schools. Public elementary (Frones, Hutchby and Moran-Ellis, James, Jenks, Mayall 1994, 1996; education starts at a minimum age of five and a half years old and Morton, Thorne). In these studies, what children do, think, and feel lasts for six years. The overwhelming majority of students who attend are important questions. Moreover, it is the ordinary-the everyday public elementary school5 are Greek Cypriots. A s mall number of of children's lives-that is key to understanding how children's iden­ Armenian Cypriots, Maronite Cypriols, and Greek (other than Greek tities are constituted by their worlds and how in turn children consti­ Cypriots) attend public elementary schools while even smaller num­ tute them through their activity (de Certeau). In this article, I am con­ bers of Turkish Cypriots, British, Americans, Lebanese, other Arabs, cerned with how Greek Cypriot children attending cl menlary school and foreign Armenians are abo recorded in official statistics as attend- in Cyprus construct their ethnic identities in th, flow of veryday life. ing public schoob. Ethnic identity construction in childhood h,1s 'normou~ potential for The urban school I studied was a med1um-s1.1.e school with 85 illuminating our understanding of the power and limilalion 1;, of col­ students and IO teachers. T'hc rural school, a district school that served lective identities as they lake shape al a parlicul, r stage in the three neighboring villages, wa<:> much smnller, with 18 tude~ts and lifecycle. We still know Jillie about how chih.Jren negoliale their iden· 2 teachers. The smaller 1;,i/ ~of the rurnl school meant that certain sub­ tities as they move in and through a variety of social con lex ls. We also jects like history and geography lhat are relevant lo ethnic sociali7a­ know little about children's ways of constructing their identities in the lion were cov red lo a lesser extent than in the urban school. In gen­ face of contradictory messages from their environments. Using cthno· eral, the smaller si/e of the school practically meanl that ethnic social­ graphic evidence from the classroom and from extra-educational con· ization was secondary to the children's education. Thus, for e~a~ple, texts like the playground, I illustrate how children construct and ne· while in-school activities like play performances or poem recitations gotiate their ethnic identities as they situate themselves in a constantly shifting world. were common on national celebrations in the urban school, they were quite infrequent at the rural school. The urban-rural dist~nc~ion is sig­ The data presented come from fieldwork carried out in Cyprus nificanl in another conlextual sense. The urban community is near the from July 1996 lo July 1997. Two communities, one urban and one buffer zone whil the rural community is far away. The stimulation rural, and their respective schools have been studied. The urban com· that the urban childr )n received, living next lo th division line, was munity is situated in the old sector of Nicosia, the capital of Cyprus significantly different than that received by lhe rural chil~ren. T~1e adjacent lo the buffer zone that separates the Turkish-occupied north urban children participated qui le frequently in demon trat1ons, vis­ from the free south. The rural community is located north west or ited the guard posts and saw on a daily basis the soldiers, the flags, Nicosia on the Troodos mountain. Lhe sandbags, and the barbed wires. The rural children lacked o~p.or­ The project utilized a variety of data-gathering techniques to col· lunilies lo participate in such events while th e\.p rience of .hvmg lect rich and detailed information on the social construction of ethnic next lo the buffer zone was absent from their daily lives. Inevitably, identities from the children's perspectives. In-depth interviews were these contextual differences lead to di ff rences in the children's eth­ carried out with the children, their parents, and their teachers as well nic socialization a nd in th way they construct both behaviorally and as other relevant agents of socialization from the two communities. cognitively their ethnic identiti es. Participant-observation formed another main technique for gathering data both within the school and in a variety of social contexts outsid e History the school like the home, the religious instruction school, the church, and the playground where children participated and expressed thei r Identity construction is firn1ly rooled in history; more pr ci ely, ethnic identities. Projective techniques like drawings, essay writing, in the various in terpretations of hi tory that hape how individuals and groups understand the pa ·t. Th rich and mulli-la ered hi Lory 74 75 Spyrou Being One and More than One of Cyprus is particularly amenable to interpretation and contestation and Cypriocenlrism. The former emphasizes the Greekness of Greek as the country continues its turbulent historical course into the Cypriots and has been the ideological position propagated primarily twenty first century. by the political ri ght wing and foremost among them the nationalists. In its long history, Cyprus has been occupied by numerous pow­ According lo this ideology, Greek Cypriots are, above all, Greeks. ers. Though the island was hellenized by the second millcnium BC, its 1lence, for l Iellenocenlrisls the primary political objective is to ensure many conquerors left their cultural marks on the Cypriot people. For the preservation of the island's Greek character and to main lain and understanding contemporary issues of identity construction in enhance its close links with the motherland, Greece. Because of their Cyprus, the Ottoman rule of the island in the late sixteenth century is nationalist orientation, I Iellenocentrisls erect strong symbolic bound­ an important historical period to consider. The Turkish Cypriot com­ aries between "our" Greek identity and "their" Turkish identity. The munity of the island grew out of the first Ottoman soldiers who were Greek language, Greek Orthodoxy, and Greek culture at large, repre­ stationed on the island and later by conversions of Greek Cypriots to sent for Hellenocentrists the very essence of Greek Cypriots' identity. Islam. When Cyprus came under British colonial rule (1878-1960), the Consider below how one teacher understands his identity from such Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot communities experienced their al lellenocenlric point of view: first problems as each community turned lo it!> re'>peclive motherland, Greece and Turkey, for a sense of collective identity.