Description
Loizos (emeritus anthropology, London School of Economics) takes the eastern Mediterranean island as a case study to explore how forced migration hurts, how much it hurts, what heals it, and what keeps it septic. He focuses on the village of Argaki at three periods: in 1968 when Greek and Turkish Cypriots lived and prospered together there, in 1975 just after the Greek Cypriots had been displaced by the Turkish invasion, and in 2000-04 when the villager's rejected the United Nations settlement plan even though it meant indefinitely postponing their return home. Annotation ©2008 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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In his vivid, lively account of how Greek Cypriot villagers coped with a thirty-year displacement, Peter Loïzos follows a group of people whom he encountered as prosperous farmers in 1968, yet found as disoriented refugees when revisiting in 1975. By providing a forty year in-depth perspective unusual in the social sciences, this study yields unconventional insights into the deeper meanings of displacement. It focuses on reconstruction of livelihoods, conservation of family, community, social capital, health (both physical and mental), religious and political perceptions. The author argues for a closer collaboration between anthropology and the life sciences, particularly medicine and social epidemiology, but suggests that qualitative life-history data have an important role to play in the understanding of how people cope with collective stress.
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