Ushers the reader into the complexities of the categorical
ambiguity of Cyprus and... concentrates... on the Dead Zone of the divided
society, in the cultural space where those who refuse to go to ...the poles
gather. -- Anastasia Karakasidou, Wellesley College The
volatile recent past of Cyprus has turned this island from the idyllic island
of Aphrodite of tourist literature into a place renowned for hostile
confrontations. Cyprus challenges familiar binary divisions, between Christianity
and Islam, Greeks and Turks, Europe and the East, tradition and modernity.
Anti-colonial struggles, the divisive effects of ethnic nationalism, war, invasion,
territorial division, and population displacements are all facets of the notorious
Cyprus Problem. Incorporating the most up-to-date social and cultural research on
Cyprus, these essays examine nationalism and interethnic relations, Cyprus and the
European Union, the impact of immigration, and the effects of tourism and
international environmental movements, among other topics.
The Harbour of All This Sea and Realm offers an overview of the Lusignan, Genoese and Venetian history of the main port city of Cyprus, a Mediterranean crossroads. The essays contribute to the ...understanding of Famagusta’s social and administrative structure, as well as the influences on its architectural, artisan, and art historical heritage from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. We read of crusader bishops from central France, metalworkers from Asia Minor, mercenaries from Genoa, refugees from Acre, and traders from Venice. The themes of the city’s diasporas and cultural hybridity permeate and unify the essays in this collaborative effort.
On April 23, 2003, to the surprise of much of the world, the ceasefire line that divides Cyprus opened. The line had partitioned the island since 1974, and so international media heralded the opening ...of the checkpoints as a historic event that echoed the fall of the Berlin Wall. As in the moment of the Wall's collapse, cameras captured the rush of Cypriots across the border to visit homes unwillingly abandoned three decades earlier. It was a euphoric moment, and one that led to expectations of reunification. But within a year Greek Cypriots overwhelmingly rejected at referendum a United Nations plan to reunite the island, despite their Turkish compatriots' support for the plan. InThe Past in Pieces, anthropologist Rebecca Bryant explores why the momentous event of the opening has not led Cyprus any closer to reunification, and indeed in many ways has driven the two communities of the island further apart. This chronicle of the "new Cyprus" tells the story of the opening through the voices and lives of the people of one town that has experienced conflict. Over the course of two years, Bryant studied a formerly mixed town in northern Cyprus in order to understand both experiences of life together before conflict and the ways in which the dissolution of that shared life is remembered today. Tales of violation and loss return from the past to shape meanings of the opening in daily life, redefining the ways in which Cypriots describe their own senses of belonging and expectations of the political future. By examining the ways the past is rewritten in the present, Bryant shows how even a momentous opening may lead not to reconciliation but instead to the discovery of new borders that may, in fact, be the real ones.
For nearly 60 years, the tiny Mediterranean nation of Cyprus has taken a disproportionate share of the international spotlight. In The Cyprus Problem: What Everyone Needs to Know®, James ...Ker-Lindsay--recently appointed as expert advisor to the UN Secretary-General's Special Advisor on Cyprus--offers an incisive, even-handed account of the conflict. Ker-Lindsay covers all aspects of the Cyprus problem, placing it in historical context, addressing the situation as it now stands, and looking toward its possible resolution.
Divided Cities Jon Calame, Esther Charlesworth
11/2011
eBook
In Jerusalem, Israeli and Jordanian militias patrolled a fortified, impassable Green Line from 1948 until 1967. In Nicosia, two walls and a buffer zone have segregated Turkish and Greek Cypriots ...since 1963. In Belfast, "peaceline" barricades have separated working-class Catholics and Protestants since 1969. In Beirut, civil war from 1974 until 1990 turned a cosmopolitan city into a lethal patchwork of ethnic enclaves. In Mostar, the Croatian and Bosniak communities have occupied two autonomous sectors since 1993. These cities were not destined for partition by their social or political histories. They were partitioned by politicians, citizens, and engineers according to limited information, short-range plans, and often dubious motives. How did it happen? How can it be avoided?
Divided Citiesexplores the logic of violent urban partition along ethnic lines-when it occurs, who supports it, what it costs, and why seemingly healthy cities succumb to it. Planning and conservation experts Jon Calame and Esther Charlesworth offer a warning beacon to a growing class of cities torn apart by ethnic rivals. Field-based investigations in Beirut, Belfast, Jerusalem, Mostar, and Nicosia are coupled with scholarly research to illuminate the history of urban dividing lines, the social impacts of physical partition, and the assorted professional responses to "self-imposed apartheid." Through interviews with people on both sides of a divide-residents, politicians, taxi drivers, built-environment professionals, cultural critics, and journalists-they compare the evolution of each urban partition along with its social impacts. The patterns that emerge support an assertion that division is a gradual, predictable, and avoidable occurrence that ultimately impedes intercommunal cooperation. With the voices of divided-city residents, updated partition maps, and previously unpublished photographs,Divided Citiesilluminates the enormous costs of physical segregation.
Peace education initiatives have been subject to heated public debate and so far the complexities involved have not been fully understood. This multilayered analysis examines how teachers negotiate ...ideological, pedagogical and emotional challenges in their attempts to enact a peace education policy. Focusing primarily on the case study of conflict-affected Cyprus, Michalinos Zembylas, Constadina Charalambous and Panayiota Charalambous situate the Cypriot case within wider theoretical and methodological debates in the field and explore the implications of their findings for theory and practice. Building on current anthropological approaches, the authors use insights from policy studies and sociolinguistics to examine peace education agendas and the ways these are shaped by the dynamics of local politics and classroom practices. This study will be valuable reading for researchers of peace and policy studies as well as for practitioners and policy makers involved in introducing peace education initiatives that challenge teachers' long-held beliefs.
New Directions in Cypriot Archaeologyhighlights current scholarship that employs a range of new techniques, methods, and theoretical approaches to questions related to the archaeology of the ...prehistoric and protohistoric periods on the island of Cyprus. From revolutions in radiocarbon dating, to the compositional analysis of ceramic remains, to the digital applications used to study landscape histories at broad scales, to rethinking human-environment/climate interrelationships, the last few decades of research on Cyprus invite inquiry into the implications of these novel archaeological methods for the field and its future directions. This edited volume gathers together a new generation of scholars who offer a revealing exploration of these insights as well as challenges to big questions in Cypriot archaeology, such as the rise of social complexity, urban settlement histories, and changes in culture and identity. These enduring topics provide the foundation for investigating the benefits and challenges of twenty-first-century methods and conceptual frameworks. Divided into three main sections related to critical chronological transitions, from earliest prehistory to the development of autonomous kingdoms during the Iron Age, each contribution exposes and engages with a different advance in studies of material culture, absolute dating, paleoenvironmental analysis, and spatial studies using geographic information systems. From rethinking the chronological transitions of the Early Bronze Age, to exploring regional craft production regimes of the Middle and Late Bronze Ages, to locating Iron Age cemeteries through archival topographic maps, these exciting and pioneering authors provide innovative ways of thinking about Cypriot archaeology and its relationship to the wider discipline.
In troubled societies narratives about the past tend to be partial and explain a conflict from narrow perspectives that justify the national self and condemn, exclude and devalue the 'enemy' and ...their narrative. Through a detailed analysis, Teaching Contested Narratives reveals the works of identity, historical narratives and memory as these are enacted in classroom dialogues, canonical texts and school ceremonies. Presenting ethnographic data from local contexts in Cyprus and Israel, and demonstrating the relevance to educational settings in countries which suffer from conflicts all over the world, the authors explore the challenges of teaching narratives about the past in such societies, discuss how historical trauma and suffering are dealt with in the context of teaching, and highlight the potential of pedagogical interventions for reconciliation. The book shows how the notions of identity, memory and reconciliation can perpetuate or challenge attachments to essentialized ideas about peace and conflict.
This study examines British rule in Cyprus from 1878 to 1954. The author analyzes the cultural and religious dimensions of Cypriot responses to British rule and the ways in which Greek Orthodox ...culture was a primary conduit for resistance to the colonial system.
Cypriot pollitics are among the most contentious in Europe, and frequently attract the attention of the international community. Here, Yiannos Katsourides traces the historical development of the ...Cypriot party system, and in particular the growth of the Communist Party, now known as AKEL- the first formally organised political party on the island. The party was a political movement with a specific programme for radical reform that conficted both with the British Empire and the local establishment. It was treated with hostility and declared illegal. Based on new archival research, Katsorides addresses the social, religious, economic and political environment in which communist and working class politics existed on the island, and locates them within the context of a country connected inextricably with Turkey, Great Britain and Greece. This book will be of significant interest to anyone interested in the history of Cyprus, European communist movements or British colonialism and diplomacy in the Mediterranean.
