I have been reading this very dense book by Holstein, J. A. & Gubrium, J. F. (2000) The Self we live by: Narrative Identity in a postmodern world. Oxford: Oxford University Press. It was quite tiring to read using a lot of complex language. i did find some useful quotes for the Thesis but i think it is tou much of a complex book to read any maybe it is complicating my thinking … Read more »

This is a book from a non-Greek about Greece, and it is available on line if somebody googles the title. A brief description i found is the following:

“Recent conflicts in southeast Europe have drawn attention to the close relationship between place and national identity. Robert Shannan Peckham here explores the conscious linkage between identity and homeland as this was articulated in 19th- and early 20th-century Greece, a period important to the understanding of the present Balkan crisis. He demonstrates how territory was appropriated through a range of social practices and institutional activities: writing fiction, identifying folklore, sponsoring archaeology, studying geography and cartography. The particularities of place, Peckham argues, were construed both as underpinning a territorial expansion and as a resistance to the homogenizing drive of a state-sponsored nationalism. This book makes an innovative theoretical contribution to the debate on nationalism and nationhood and suggests new ways of thinking about geography and cultural politics”

I have found that in my interviews with the Greek participants, such a book is very relevant as it desctibes certain dynamics that are not easily articulated and go beyond the immediate experience of the therapits but seem to operate at an unconscious level within their cultural identity

Artemis Leontis – Book Review: Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland – Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14:1 Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14.1 (1996) 188-191 Book Review Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland Artemis Leontis, Topographies of Hellenism: Mapping the Homeland. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. 1995.

The word topos in Greek reflects the intersection of literature with geography, rhetoric, and space. The negotiation of topos has been central to Greek history and culture for the past two centuries, a number of intellectual battles having been fought over its conflicting conceptions. Greek texts offer abundant material for a genealogy of topos in Greek literary history. Leontis, through careful readings of selected texts and passages, traces the uses of topos and the changing topographies of Hellenism. Caught between logos and topos, Greeks sought incessantly to reconcile the imaginary Hellas with their modern homeland, past with present, discourse with geography, Hellenism with Neohellenism. Leontis’s book sets out to explore this attempt at reconciliation together with the symbolic significance of place. It is a wide-ranging study that takes us from the way Western travelers saw the Acropolis to Makronisos and from Virginia Woolf’s “A Dialogue upon Mount Pentelicus” to Elytis’s Axion Esti. In her introduction, Leontis investigates the Greek sense of place, arguing that literature and…

Another book i reviewed for Thresholds journal, titled “Culturaly alert Counseling – a comprehensive introduction”  – it was not at all to my linking, very ‘americanised, we-have-all-answers’ kind of style that i think is actually a bit ‘dangerous’ especially when talking about issues of culture. I disagree with tha categorising of people and the emphasis of ‘we’ and ‘they’ principle when referring to the ‘other’ or ‘less familiar’ .Here it is, will be published soon too: … Read more »

I reviewed a very interesting book. Here is the reference: Jones Thomas, A & Schwarzbaum, S. (2006) Culture and Identity: Life Stories for Counselors and Therapists. Sage. This book has informed by thinking a lot and it will soon be published in Thresholds Journal. Here is the review below: … Read more »