ABSTRACT
In this chapter I discuss fieldwork carried out in Greece in the 1960s, 70s and 80s. The first piece of research, sixteen months’ doctoral fieldwork in 1966/ 7, concentrated on the inhabitants of a small island in the Aegean (to which I gave the pseudonym ‘Nisos’, the Greek for ‘island’, in my publications). A later research project, carried out in three months in the summer of 1973, focused on island migrants in the suburbs of Athens. Most recently, a year’s research, from August 1987 to July 1988, was divided between the island and the migrant community. These places have changed and so have the people who live in them. Some have literally changed place, moving from the island to the city or in the opposite direction; others have changed through growing older, and through new experiences and opportunities. In the 1960s many islanders were moving permanently to the city or going there for seasonal work; in the 1980s this direction of movement reversed. Migrants were returning to Nisos, either permanently to work or retire, or temporarily, to seize opportunities offered by its tourist development. Paralleling these changes of place are alterations, which I will attempt to outline, in the mutual perceptions of islanders, migrants and anthropologist.
