ABSTRACT
Most of the material on which this analysis is based was gathered through fieldwork in Piraeus, the main port of Greece. 1 I lived for over a year in a residential locality called Kokkinia, about a mile from the harbour, which today has within its administrative boundary a population of over 86,000 (cf. 1971 census). The district is an integral part of the metropolis of Athens and Piraeus, which together form a single urban concentration of some three million inhabitants. Until very recently Kokkinia always had the character of a poor district, and it remains a lower-income area although living standards have risen sharply in the past decade. It is indistinguishable from the surrounding built-up area, but its origins were distinctive. It began as a settlement for Greek refugees from Asia Minor and had a population of some 40,000 by 1934, just ten years after its founding.
