Sebastian Ștefănuca, Markers and Symbols of the Identity Phenomenon within the Hellenic Populations Colonized in Northern Greece

Sebastian Ștefănuca - Bucharest
TOME LVII 2019
p. 87-103
Online publication date: 
02/05/2024
Keywords: 
identity, origin, population category, symbols and markers, uprooting
Abstract: 

The population transfers and exchanges between the states from the Balkan Peninsula and Anatolia, in the first half of the 20th century, generated new identities. Even though, in order to analyze them, it is invariably done under the sign of ethnicity, the groups which they belong to are more accurately named not ethnic groups, but population categories within the nation they are a part of. Origin represents a central marker of these identities. Culturally speaking, the appearances of the identity phenomenon connected to a place of origin are noticeable in various categories of markers and symbols: oiconymic, spiritual, sportive, of song and popular dance, etc. The following paper focuses on the ethnographic illustration of these categories regarding the Pontians and the Minor-Asians in Greece. In dealing with the spiritual category, a visual anthropology application is presented, which refers to the custom of burning Judas in a Greek settlement at the border with The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. It is worth mentioning that such an identity phenomenon represents a wide and fertile area of anthropologic research in the regions mentioned.