Genealogies across the cold war divide: The case of the Pontic Greeks from the former Soviet Union and their ‘affinal repatriation’
Abstract
This paper focuses on two historical moments in time and geographical locations, significantly situated at the beginning and the end of the Cold War of the Pontic Greeks’ recent past. The significance of these moments relates to the two encounters between the two formerly isolated groups of Pontic Greeks, separated by the Cold War divide: one in the East (FSU) and the other in the West (Greek nation state). It addresses the continuous reconceptualisation of state-family relations, including the Soviet policies of the state as family. The main hypothesis is that in the case of the Pontic Greeks ‘repatriation’, normally seen as ‘return to a place’, should be construed as ‘affinal repatriation’, meaning ‘return to each other’. The paper considers alliance theory (affinity by marriage), thus expanding the traditional concept of kinship (as consanguinity) while maintaining the idiom of belonging, including ideological foes as defined by the Cold War Divide.
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Biographies
Eftihia Voutira is a Professor of Anthropology of Forced Migration, University of Macedonia. She has studied Philosophy at the University of Chicago and at Harvard University where she received a doctorate, and then she did postgraduate studies in Social Anthropology at Cambridge University, where she received a second doctorate. She has taught at the University of Oxford in the Refugee Studies Programme (1992-1998) and at the Forced Migration and Refugees Studies Centre, American University in Cairo (2001-2008). Since 1998, she has been Professor in the Anthropology of Force Migration at the department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies at University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece. As anthropologist, she has done extensive fieldwork in the former Soviet Union, in South and Central Africa, and in the Middle East. She has published extensively on issues of refugee protection and humanitarian assistance. She is the author of several monographs.
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Article first published online: July 21, 2020
Issue published: September 2020
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