Imagining the Modern: The Cultures of Nationalism in Cyprus

by Rebecca Bryant

Overview

This book argues that two conflicting styles of nationalist imagination led to the violent rending of Cyprus in 1974 and sustained that division over decades. Based on research in both southern and northern Cyprus, the work demonstrates how the conflict emerged through the Cypriot's encounters with modernity under British colonialism, and through a consequent re-imagining of the body politic in a new world in which Cypriots were defined as part of a European periphery. Rebecca Bryant demonstrates how Muslims and Christians were transformed into Turks and Greeks, and what it meant epistemologically, ontollogically and politically when they were.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781850434627
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	08/27/2004
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.67(d)

About the Author

Rebecca Bryant was most recently Visiting Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Cornell University and is engaged in research on place and memory in Cyprus.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	A Linguistic Note	xii
	Introduction	1
Part 1	Stirrings
	Introduction	15
1	Rights and Religions	20
2	Bandits and "Bad Characters"	48
Part 2	Movements
	Introduction	75
3	Tactics and Truths	79
4	Pashas and Protests	99
Part 3	Revolutions
	Introduction	123
5	Educating Ethnicity	129
6	An Education in Honor	156
Part 4	Aftermath
	Introduction	185
7	The Purity of Spirit and the Power of Blood	190
8	Justice or Respect?	217
	Conclusion: Toward a Postnational Cyprus	249
	Bibliography	253
	Notes	271
	Index	301

Editorial Reviews

""Rebecca Bryant's study demonstrates a most unusual depth and balance in its account of the dual nationalisms in Cyprus and of the progress towards conflict. Few scholars have studied both communities in equal depth. Bryant has asked herself how and why ethnic nationalisms in colonial Cyprus succeeded in transforming late Ottoman Christians and Muslims into violent antagonists. In these modern encounters, the nationalists on both sides insisted first that they were Greeks or Turks, secondly, that the island self-evidently 'belonged' exclusively to only one of them. Her answers are subtle, having much to do with the nature of modernity-through-education, with literacy, social discipline, a moralized self, and certain kinds of history. Her understanding of the connection between education and national/ethnic identification is profound, bold and original.""--Peter Loizos, London School of Economics and Political Science

From the Publisher