Documents
eHRAF is comprised of thousands of ethnographic sources including monographs, journal articles, dissertations and manuscripts. Use this page to find relevant documents by searching or filtering. Each document in eHRAF also contains a Publication Information page with added metadata including brief abstracts written by HRAF analysts who have subject-indexed the file.
Closure as curearticle 1986 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
Herzfeld examines evil eye (THIARMOS) from a semiotic perspective. He makes a distinction between the experience and expression of illness. The experience of pain from evil eye is one of a tension headache, which can include nausea and backache. The ...The dowery in Greecearticle 1980 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this article, Herzfeld examines the meaning and institutional continuity of 'dowry' (PRIKA) in a Rhodian farming village. He discovers that PRIKA is not as simple as 'real estate conferred on a woman when she marries.' Informants could not give an...Embarrassment as pridearticle 1988 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
This is a careful analysis of two animal raiding narratives by Cretan highland pastoralists, focusing on the excuses made by the narrators for their actions. In the first story the narrator excuses himself for participating in a raid at too-old an ag...The etymology of excusesarticle 1982 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this article, Herzfeld examines the similar rhetoric of excuse making used at both the personal and national level. Journalistic accounts of bureaucratic indifference and superpower intervention are couched in personal terms of inhospitality and b...Gender pragmaticsarticle 1985 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this article, Herzfeld examines the grammar of gender in narratives of bride-abduction in highland Crete. Bride abduction occurs in situations when the male suitor's original request for marriage is rebuffed. The successful abduction shows off the...History in the makingessay 1992 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this article, Herzfeld discusses Cretan villagers' understanding and representation of village, regional, and national history. Villagers have an acute understanding of power relationships as evident in their folktales and songs, which together wi...Honour and shamearticle 1980 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this article, Herzfeld argues that the literature on Mediterranean value-systems with its focus on the concepts of honor and shame glosses over a wide variety of terms and understandings found in the region. He discusses the meanings of the Greek ...Icons and identityarticle 1990 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this article Herzfeld makes a connection between icon painting and social segmentation. Icons are considered containers, or refractions, of the divine essence, in which their aesthetic appeal lies in their faithfulness to a model rather than in th...In defiance of destiny 1993 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
...Interpreting kinship terminologyarticle 1983 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this article, Herzfeld argues against a unified Greek kinship terminology and kinship system. For example, the term SOI refers to a cognatic kindred in Rhodes and an agnatic grouping in Crete. Herzfeld surmises that the term was derived from a Tur...Literacy as symbolic strategy in Greecearticle 1990 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
This article is largely a theoretical argument against the analytical separation of oral traditions and literary texts. The latter are often an appropriation of the former, for example in folklore studies, where the search for an original urtext serv...Meaning and moralityarticle 1981 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this article, Herzfeld analyzes evil eye (THIARMOS) as an expression of social deviancy and nonreciprocity. Evil eye accusations are leveled at members of the village who shun or igore the everyday acts of reciprocity that constitute the moral and...Of definitions and boundariesessay 1986 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
This is a discussion of how the nation state appropriates the discourse of ethnicity and kinship, and fixes their terms in a process of naturalization and reification. The state creates a rigid identity and morality that lacks the indeterminate, vari...Ours once moreBook 1986 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this book, Herzfeld examines the role of folklorists in the building of the modern Greek nation state. He argues that folklore studies contributed significantly to the Hellenist movement in the period between Greek Independence (1821) and Greece's...A place in historyBook 1991 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
Herzfeld examines inter-linked issues of housing, tourism, history, local-state relations, and identity in the Cretan port town of Rethemnos. How is identity negotiated in a town that has been at a cross currents of history (Venetian and Turkish) and...The poetics of manhoodBook 1985 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
This is Herzfeld's pièce de résistance and classic ethnography on Cretan highland culture. He makes the argument that androcentric ideology lies at the root of highland Crete's segmentary society and shows how in almost every instance male social enc...Pride and perjuryarticle 1990 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
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 indice...Silence, submission, and subversionessay 1991 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
The ethnographic literature on Greece has depicted women as submissively silent or dangerously garrulous. In the public sphere women submit to male control of material resources, decisions as to the future of the family's children, and the family's p...Social tension and inheritance by lot in three Greek villagesarticle 1980 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this article, Herzfeld looks at the widespread and variable practice of division of property by lot in rural Greece, where partible inheritance is the norm. Herzfeld argues that casting by lot is most likely to occur in instances where property tr...When exceptions define the rulesarticle 1982 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this article Herzfeld discusses naming practices in two Greek communities. Children are usually named after their grandparents, alternating between sides of the family. For example the first son is named after his father's father, the second son a...Within and withoutessay 1986 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this paper Herzfeld discusses some of the problems inherent in the study of gender ideology in Greek society. He notes that the concepts of 'female' and 'male' are symbolic categories which are manipulable and labile and are terms used by both vil...Sematic slippage and moral fallarticle 1983 • Herzfeld, Michael
Greeks • Europe > Southeastern Europe
In this paper, Herzfeld examines marriage and the rhetoric of chastity in rural society. Although brides are expected to be virgins this is often not the case, today or in the past. According to Herzfeld the believed rectitude of past generations is ...