article
Pride and perjury: time and the oath in the mountain villages of Crete
Man • 25 • Published In 1990 • Pages: 302-322
By: Herzfeld, Michael.
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
In this article, Herzfeld examines the practice of oath taking by Cretan shepherds, i.e., of swearing one's innocence before a religious icon in order to dispel suspicions of animal-theft and restore trust. According to Herzfeld, the icons are indices of an 'unspoiled and irrecoverable past' of 'balanced perfection of social relations,' what he calls 'structural nostalgia.' By invoking this structural nostalgia, adversaries hope to restore a state of peace between them and erase a history of petty grievances and slights. Herzfeld also discusses how the intrusion of a modern bureaucratic judicial system undermines this practice of local self-management and the effectiveness of adjudication as a whole.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Informal in-group justice
- Property offenses
- Offenses against the state
- Religious offenses
- Purification and atonement
- cultureCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Greeks
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2003
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- Europe
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Southeastern Europe
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- article
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Ethnologist
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Ian Skoggard ; 2002
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1974-1984
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 1970-1987
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Crete, Greece
- NotesAdditional notes
- Michael Herzfeld
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 321-322)
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- sf 80000548
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Greece