miltiadis zermpoulis
Miltiadis Zermpoulis holds a Phd in Social Anthropology from the Department of Balkan, Slavic and Oriental Studies at the University of Macedonia in Thessaloniki. Between 2015 and 2017 had been working as a research fellow at the Institute for Folklore and Cultural Anthropology at the University
of Hamburg, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Greek -German Fund for Future. Between 2017 and 2021 had been coordinating integration programs of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees at the migrant organisation Multicultural Forum e.V. in Germany. Since 2020 is a full Member of the Association of Social Anthropologists of Greece.
By the first June of 2021 has been working as a research associate and deputy head at the Institute for Transcultural Competence at the Police Academy of Hamburg.
Miltiadis conducted fieldwork in Germany and in Greece. He published articles in Greek, English and German. His academic interests include material culture, anthropology of space, state culture, anthropology of class, ethnic/ religious minorities and migration. Recently he published Von der Flucht zur griechischen Mittelklasse. Eine Ethnographie über soziale Veränderung und materielle Integration eines Flüchtlingsstadtteils im Thessaloniki der Nachkriegszeit, Kieler Blätter zur Volkskunde, 2020. Together with the Art Director and Graphic Designer Dr. Hasan Isikli created in 2021 the Art Work "Decolonize empty spaces" which was launched under the auspices of the Culture Borders Gender Laboratory. The video- Installation received financial support from Rosa Luxemburg Foundation - Greece in order to be presented in the nomadic, hybrid symposium entitled Decolonizing Hellas : Imperial Pasts, Contested Presents, Emancipated Futures, 1821 - 2021.
Supervisors: Fotini Tsibiridou, Effie Voutira, Kerstin Poehls , and Sonja Windmüller
Address: Hamburg, Germany
of Hamburg, funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Greek -German Fund for Future. Between 2017 and 2021 had been coordinating integration programs of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees at the migrant organisation Multicultural Forum e.V. in Germany. Since 2020 is a full Member of the Association of Social Anthropologists of Greece.
By the first June of 2021 has been working as a research associate and deputy head at the Institute for Transcultural Competence at the Police Academy of Hamburg.
Miltiadis conducted fieldwork in Germany and in Greece. He published articles in Greek, English and German. His academic interests include material culture, anthropology of space, state culture, anthropology of class, ethnic/ religious minorities and migration. Recently he published Von der Flucht zur griechischen Mittelklasse. Eine Ethnographie über soziale Veränderung und materielle Integration eines Flüchtlingsstadtteils im Thessaloniki der Nachkriegszeit, Kieler Blätter zur Volkskunde, 2020. Together with the Art Director and Graphic Designer Dr. Hasan Isikli created in 2021 the Art Work "Decolonize empty spaces" which was launched under the auspices of the Culture Borders Gender Laboratory. The video- Installation received financial support from Rosa Luxemburg Foundation - Greece in order to be presented in the nomadic, hybrid symposium entitled Decolonizing Hellas : Imperial Pasts, Contested Presents, Emancipated Futures, 1821 - 2021.
Supervisors: Fotini Tsibiridou, Effie Voutira, Kerstin Poehls , and Sonja Windmüller
Address: Hamburg, Germany
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des Lebens besitzt, ihre Handlungsmacht verlieren, wenn dieser stirbt. Die Analyse basiert auf wissenschaftlichen Ansätzen, die Dinge als soziale Entitäten mit Handlungsmacht betrachten. Diese Ansätze konzentrieren sich nicht mehr auf die Symbolkraft und die ästhetische, kulturelle oder soziale Bedeutung von Objekten, sondern darauf, was sie in bestimmten historischen und sozialen Kontexten tun. Einige davon nehmen speziell die multisensorische Wirkung von Objekten in den Blick, indem sie den Schwerpunkt auf die von diesen hervorgerufenen Emotionen und Verhaltensweisen legen. Was also bewirken diese Dinge und was
genau tun sie, wenn sie mit den Nachkommen der Verstorbenen und mit fremden Menschen in Kontakt kommen, die mit den Gegenständen auf eine jeweils spezifische Art und Weise verbunden sind? Wie interagieren einzelne Objekte mit anderen Objekten einer persönlichen Sammlung? Haben Gegenstände des Alltags eine „Biographie“ und wie kann man davon erfahren, wenn ihre ursprünglichen Besitzer:innen nicht mehr leben? Sind alte Objekte identitätsstiftend und können sie als Brücke zwischen unterschiedlichen Lebensgeschichten und -arten funktionieren? Menschen und Dinge befinden sich in einem engen Kontakt miteinander. Wir sind nicht nur Besitzer:innen und Verbraucher:innen von bestimmten Objekten, sondern diese sind identitätsstiftend und können unsere alltäglichen Praktiken beeinflussen.
MA Dissertation by miltiadis zermpoulis
Innerhalb des Osmanischen Reiches waren die Begriffen Nation und Nationalität unbekannt. Das Osmanische Reich war ein multikultureller Vielvölkerstaat, der aus verschiedenen Religionsgruppen bestand, den sogenannten „Millet“. Es handelte sich um ein Verwaltungssystem der nichtmuslimischen Untertanen des Reiches, dadurch konnte der Osmanische Staat seine Untertanen besser kontrollieren. Patriarchen, Katholikos und Rabbi galten als Verwaltungsbeamter des Reiches, die für ihre Glaubensgemeinschaft zuständig waren. Das geistliche Oberhaupt verwaltete als Staat im Staate und aus diesem Grund wurde aus dem obersten Gemeindevorsteher mit der Zeit ein Vertreter seiner Nation oder Ethnarch, als der Ethnisierungsprozess sich innerhalb dieser Glaubensgemeinschaften weiterentwickelte.
Die Untertanen des Reiches unterschieden sich nur nach der Konfessionszugehörigkeit. Alle orthodoxen Christen gehörten zum „Rum-Millet“ und waren innerhalb des Osmanischen Reiches als Romei, Römer (gr. =Ρωμαίοι) oder Romie (gr. =Ρωμιοί) bekannt. Das Rum-Millet bestand aus verschiedenen „Ethnien“, Bulgaren, Serben, Rumänen, Slawisch sprechende Makedonier und Griechen, die aber über kein nationales Selbstbewusstsein verfügten. Die Balkanhalbinsel war im Altertum von drei Völkern bewohnt. Den Griechen, den Illyrern und den Thrakern. Die Römer eroberten den größten Teil der Balkanhalbinsel, haben aber nur entlang der adriatischen Küste und der Donau gewohnt. Die Balkanhalbinsel bestand aus zwei städtischen linguistischen Siedlungen, im Norden und Westen römisch und im Süden und Osten griechisch. Im 6. Jh. n. Chr. wurde die Balkanhalbinsel von Südslawen besiedelt. Die Verschmelzung der verschiedenen Völkergruppen der Balkanhalbinsel und ihr Zusammenleben für viele Jahrhunderte hat die ethnische Struktur des Balkans für immer geändert. Südosteuropa war ein buntes Gebiet, das von einer Vielzahl ethnischer Gruppen besiedelt war. Ethnisch homogene Siedlungsgebiete bildeten eine Ausnahme.
Alle orthodoxen Christen waren im Osmanischen Reich loyal gegenüber dem griechischen Patriarchat in Istanbul, besuchten griechische Schulen und lernten die griechische Kultur. Die griechische Sprache war besonders im 17.Jh. und 18.Jh. in Südosteuropa die Lingua Franca. Sie war die Handelssprache und daher benutzte man Griechisch neben der Muttersprache, die man nur zu Hause gesprochen hat, weil man so bessere Chance in Bezug auf seine Teilnahme am sozialen und politischen Leben des Reiches haben konnte.
Special Issue by miltiadis zermpoulis
Books by miltiadis zermpoulis
political elite and parts of the middle class have shared a dream of
consolidating and maintaining the country's western, bourgeois-liberal
orientation. In 1947, with the civil war still raging in the country, the
Greek government chose the path of the capitalist countries and joined the
American programme for the reconstruction of war-torn Europe. Miltiadis
Zermpoulis examines the social and political changes brought about by the
civil war, the dominance of conservatives in the political arena and the
promotion of political surveillance and compliance technologies in the daily
life of Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki.
Greeks were encouraged by their politicians and their liberators to establish a
liberal democracy, based on the promise of a project for the formation of a
stable, Greek middle class through some political initiatives; massive
urbanization, immigration to Germany, the promotion of small private property
ownership and a new ‘bourgeois’ life style, in order to protect Greece against
Communism. However this sudden change gave birth to special attitudes and
lifestyles, as the protagonists of the intended change were requested to
integrate and adopt principle models and standards of Modern Greek
bourgeois morality. This project aims to obtain, through a bottom-up
approach, the insider’s view of the above process of social and political
change through lived experiences during 50s and 60s. The focus of the
project is on people aged 60 - 90, living in both Greece and Germany.
In this PhD research, I am studying the impact of the socio-political
transformations in Greece during the 50s and 60s, upon the everyday life of
ordinary people in Thessaloniki and Greek emigrants from Germany, who
spent the following years between the two countries. In particular, I am
studying the process of coping in terms of the individual choice and the logic
of practice dictating behaviour. People have tried to make their own, the
legitimate symbolic goods of urbanization proposed by the state, however
they lacked the knowledge of their appropriate use and consumption, as
379
claimed in Bourdieu's theory of practice. It is therefore interesting to focus on
this mimicry, which characterizes the practice of the lower middle class, in
order to find a more anthropological perspective of how this is achieved in the
frame of a particular political economy. At the same time, upward social
moblity trends are of particular interest in this study, actually where it stems
from and how it is eventually managed within the given cultural environment in
which subjects act how this need is experienced and by what means it is
finally achieved, is of great importance.
In this study, lower middle class behaviour is not considered to be an
attribute typical of a specific class, but rather of a frame of mind, because the
particularity of the Greek post-war society can be met in all walks of life since
it seems to cross over all social classes. If one takes into account not only the
logical but also the physical practices of individuals which also need to be
studied in detail, the scientific reflection should focus on the characteristics
attributed to the post-civil war Greek State. In addition to the integration within
the state and particularly the relationship with it for example, ‘clientelism’
which leads to an examination of whether the subjects are indifferent to the
laws of the State and bypass them in their everyday life.
This study also aims to compare the self construction through every day
practices, the specific consumption patterns, home design and the special
meaning of home possessions and ist change since the 50s and 60s,
between my informants in Thessaloniki and the emigrants from this city into
Germany.
Overall, this project is very helpful for a better understanding of the city’s
history in both short and long term scales, allowing us to gain a more accurate
view of the formation of identities and mentalities in the Mediterranean world.
This leads to a better understanding of the way that specific modalities have
been constructed and performed in cities, which lie, on the global south.
To download : http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/46891
Conference Presentations by miltiadis zermpoulis
2019) in Kato Toumba, this changeover was among other things material, as it was connected
62
to experiences of “material” transformation both in the public space of the neighbourhood and
the private space of the refugee house. The materiality of this first house in Greece was often
connected to experiences of loss and poverty that played an important role in the construction
of the refugee identity, an identity that seems to have gradually transformed through experiences of spatial change. The refugee house is also a productive asset for the refugees, allowing their gradual social integration into the new country. Refugee families stay together and
work hard to accomplish their goals. In the post-war Greek normality, being a houseowner
became an important precondition for becoming part of the middle class of “noikokyraioi.”
Refugee families brought with them social competences and cultural capital from their previous life in the metropolises of the Ottoman Empire, contributing actively not only to their
own integration but also to the transformation and modernization process of post-war Greece.
At the end of 19th century also the Ottoman Empire had to be modernized and integrate more democratic and liberal principles and legislations influenced from the western Nation States of Europe in order to overcome what was thought as obsolete and not modern. Tanzimat reforms seek not only to change the empire politically but also spatial through the modernization of its important harbor cities. Thessaloniki until 1912 was a vital part of the Ottoman Empire and its urban space was marked through its different inhabitants since its foundation on 315 BC. The old byzantine wall was demolished in 1865 and a new more modern city had to be constructed through other spatial initiatives. Thessaloniki because of its architecture is more comparable to other cities of the Ottoman Empire as Izmir and Istanbul and not to Athens influenced more from the neoclassical architectural style. A great number of buildings, which were built during this period of modernization, were influenced by the architectural style of Eclecticism, which was also applied in Western Europe as a general style of 19th century architecture after neo-classicism. In 1912 Thessaloniki became part of a Nation State, which tried also to become modern and European. The greek regime of Eleftherios Venizelos during the World war I and after the big fire in 1917 that destroyed a great part of the city saw Thessaloniki as a chance for Greece to acquire a more ‘European’ and ‘modern’ city especially through the elaboration of a ‘mega- plan’ in order to de-ottomanize its urban fabric. The well-known ‘Hebrard’s’ plan reparcelled completely the urban land and introduce a more ‘rationalistic’ typology in the urban design that of the building block, defined by vertical streets, big squares at the center of the intersection of great boulevards and the use of ‘holy’ antiquities as mnemonic topoi of a glorious and continuous past.
My area of interest had not at that time any of such ‘holy places’ that was important to the constructed Greek modernity, on the contrary disposed mainly material proofs of an unwanted past. This fact led to a very interesting progress in their ‘social life’ according to Appadurai during the 20th that my ethnographical research brought on the surface and made clear the reasons of the feeling of an emptiness that this place oozes today according to my informants.
Contacting ethnographical research in Thessaloniki between 2012 and 2015 I tried to search from below for such social and cultural practices and life styles in Thessaloniki. Especially, using the analytical categories of social class and material culture I tried to understand the way that an originally refugee settlement in Thessaloniki, through massive state initiatives but also through the personal engagement and effort of the people, became a completely well integrated part of the old city. My informants, all of them children of the first generation of refugees of Asian Minor, narrate their family stories of the first difficult years in the poor and not well organized refugee settlement of Kato Toumpa at the outskirts of the city. Through their ornaments, personal things and photographs, inside their modern apartments, they remember not only their poor past but also their hard efforts to become ‘Nikokirei’, creating a status of leaving that the current Crisis threatens to destroy.
Talks by miltiadis zermpoulis
In this presentation I will try to show the multiple ways that family photographs as material objects act and influence people in their everyday life. My informants of Kato Toumpa decorate their living rooms with framed photographs of their family members documenting in this way their personal social success in life, becoming part of the post war middle class of Thessaloniki. The subjects use these materials in order to argue for specific qualities and skills that define their belonging to a social class. The Family albums and the framed photographs compensate often the material loss of the previous generation and empower their owners to deal with the present financial crisis that threatens their social reproduction. Photographs as material objects are part of personal assemblages into them our informants of Thessaloniki find themselves and reconstruct their fragmented past.
des Lebens besitzt, ihre Handlungsmacht verlieren, wenn dieser stirbt. Die Analyse basiert auf wissenschaftlichen Ansätzen, die Dinge als soziale Entitäten mit Handlungsmacht betrachten. Diese Ansätze konzentrieren sich nicht mehr auf die Symbolkraft und die ästhetische, kulturelle oder soziale Bedeutung von Objekten, sondern darauf, was sie in bestimmten historischen und sozialen Kontexten tun. Einige davon nehmen speziell die multisensorische Wirkung von Objekten in den Blick, indem sie den Schwerpunkt auf die von diesen hervorgerufenen Emotionen und Verhaltensweisen legen. Was also bewirken diese Dinge und was
genau tun sie, wenn sie mit den Nachkommen der Verstorbenen und mit fremden Menschen in Kontakt kommen, die mit den Gegenständen auf eine jeweils spezifische Art und Weise verbunden sind? Wie interagieren einzelne Objekte mit anderen Objekten einer persönlichen Sammlung? Haben Gegenstände des Alltags eine „Biographie“ und wie kann man davon erfahren, wenn ihre ursprünglichen Besitzer:innen nicht mehr leben? Sind alte Objekte identitätsstiftend und können sie als Brücke zwischen unterschiedlichen Lebensgeschichten und -arten funktionieren? Menschen und Dinge befinden sich in einem engen Kontakt miteinander. Wir sind nicht nur Besitzer:innen und Verbraucher:innen von bestimmten Objekten, sondern diese sind identitätsstiftend und können unsere alltäglichen Praktiken beeinflussen.
Innerhalb des Osmanischen Reiches waren die Begriffen Nation und Nationalität unbekannt. Das Osmanische Reich war ein multikultureller Vielvölkerstaat, der aus verschiedenen Religionsgruppen bestand, den sogenannten „Millet“. Es handelte sich um ein Verwaltungssystem der nichtmuslimischen Untertanen des Reiches, dadurch konnte der Osmanische Staat seine Untertanen besser kontrollieren. Patriarchen, Katholikos und Rabbi galten als Verwaltungsbeamter des Reiches, die für ihre Glaubensgemeinschaft zuständig waren. Das geistliche Oberhaupt verwaltete als Staat im Staate und aus diesem Grund wurde aus dem obersten Gemeindevorsteher mit der Zeit ein Vertreter seiner Nation oder Ethnarch, als der Ethnisierungsprozess sich innerhalb dieser Glaubensgemeinschaften weiterentwickelte.
Die Untertanen des Reiches unterschieden sich nur nach der Konfessionszugehörigkeit. Alle orthodoxen Christen gehörten zum „Rum-Millet“ und waren innerhalb des Osmanischen Reiches als Romei, Römer (gr. =Ρωμαίοι) oder Romie (gr. =Ρωμιοί) bekannt. Das Rum-Millet bestand aus verschiedenen „Ethnien“, Bulgaren, Serben, Rumänen, Slawisch sprechende Makedonier und Griechen, die aber über kein nationales Selbstbewusstsein verfügten. Die Balkanhalbinsel war im Altertum von drei Völkern bewohnt. Den Griechen, den Illyrern und den Thrakern. Die Römer eroberten den größten Teil der Balkanhalbinsel, haben aber nur entlang der adriatischen Küste und der Donau gewohnt. Die Balkanhalbinsel bestand aus zwei städtischen linguistischen Siedlungen, im Norden und Westen römisch und im Süden und Osten griechisch. Im 6. Jh. n. Chr. wurde die Balkanhalbinsel von Südslawen besiedelt. Die Verschmelzung der verschiedenen Völkergruppen der Balkanhalbinsel und ihr Zusammenleben für viele Jahrhunderte hat die ethnische Struktur des Balkans für immer geändert. Südosteuropa war ein buntes Gebiet, das von einer Vielzahl ethnischer Gruppen besiedelt war. Ethnisch homogene Siedlungsgebiete bildeten eine Ausnahme.
Alle orthodoxen Christen waren im Osmanischen Reich loyal gegenüber dem griechischen Patriarchat in Istanbul, besuchten griechische Schulen und lernten die griechische Kultur. Die griechische Sprache war besonders im 17.Jh. und 18.Jh. in Südosteuropa die Lingua Franca. Sie war die Handelssprache und daher benutzte man Griechisch neben der Muttersprache, die man nur zu Hause gesprochen hat, weil man so bessere Chance in Bezug auf seine Teilnahme am sozialen und politischen Leben des Reiches haben konnte.
political elite and parts of the middle class have shared a dream of
consolidating and maintaining the country's western, bourgeois-liberal
orientation. In 1947, with the civil war still raging in the country, the
Greek government chose the path of the capitalist countries and joined the
American programme for the reconstruction of war-torn Europe. Miltiadis
Zermpoulis examines the social and political changes brought about by the
civil war, the dominance of conservatives in the political arena and the
promotion of political surveillance and compliance technologies in the daily
life of Greece's second largest city, Thessaloniki.
Greeks were encouraged by their politicians and their liberators to establish a
liberal democracy, based on the promise of a project for the formation of a
stable, Greek middle class through some political initiatives; massive
urbanization, immigration to Germany, the promotion of small private property
ownership and a new ‘bourgeois’ life style, in order to protect Greece against
Communism. However this sudden change gave birth to special attitudes and
lifestyles, as the protagonists of the intended change were requested to
integrate and adopt principle models and standards of Modern Greek
bourgeois morality. This project aims to obtain, through a bottom-up
approach, the insider’s view of the above process of social and political
change through lived experiences during 50s and 60s. The focus of the
project is on people aged 60 - 90, living in both Greece and Germany.
In this PhD research, I am studying the impact of the socio-political
transformations in Greece during the 50s and 60s, upon the everyday life of
ordinary people in Thessaloniki and Greek emigrants from Germany, who
spent the following years between the two countries. In particular, I am
studying the process of coping in terms of the individual choice and the logic
of practice dictating behaviour. People have tried to make their own, the
legitimate symbolic goods of urbanization proposed by the state, however
they lacked the knowledge of their appropriate use and consumption, as
379
claimed in Bourdieu's theory of practice. It is therefore interesting to focus on
this mimicry, which characterizes the practice of the lower middle class, in
order to find a more anthropological perspective of how this is achieved in the
frame of a particular political economy. At the same time, upward social
moblity trends are of particular interest in this study, actually where it stems
from and how it is eventually managed within the given cultural environment in
which subjects act how this need is experienced and by what means it is
finally achieved, is of great importance.
In this study, lower middle class behaviour is not considered to be an
attribute typical of a specific class, but rather of a frame of mind, because the
particularity of the Greek post-war society can be met in all walks of life since
it seems to cross over all social classes. If one takes into account not only the
logical but also the physical practices of individuals which also need to be
studied in detail, the scientific reflection should focus on the characteristics
attributed to the post-civil war Greek State. In addition to the integration within
the state and particularly the relationship with it for example, ‘clientelism’
which leads to an examination of whether the subjects are indifferent to the
laws of the State and bypass them in their everyday life.
This study also aims to compare the self construction through every day
practices, the specific consumption patterns, home design and the special
meaning of home possessions and ist change since the 50s and 60s,
between my informants in Thessaloniki and the emigrants from this city into
Germany.
Overall, this project is very helpful for a better understanding of the city’s
history in both short and long term scales, allowing us to gain a more accurate
view of the formation of identities and mentalities in the Mediterranean world.
This leads to a better understanding of the way that specific modalities have
been constructed and performed in cities, which lie, on the global south.
To download : http://hdl.handle.net/10442/hedi/46891
2019) in Kato Toumba, this changeover was among other things material, as it was connected
62
to experiences of “material” transformation both in the public space of the neighbourhood and
the private space of the refugee house. The materiality of this first house in Greece was often
connected to experiences of loss and poverty that played an important role in the construction
of the refugee identity, an identity that seems to have gradually transformed through experiences of spatial change. The refugee house is also a productive asset for the refugees, allowing their gradual social integration into the new country. Refugee families stay together and
work hard to accomplish their goals. In the post-war Greek normality, being a houseowner
became an important precondition for becoming part of the middle class of “noikokyraioi.”
Refugee families brought with them social competences and cultural capital from their previous life in the metropolises of the Ottoman Empire, contributing actively not only to their
own integration but also to the transformation and modernization process of post-war Greece.
At the end of 19th century also the Ottoman Empire had to be modernized and integrate more democratic and liberal principles and legislations influenced from the western Nation States of Europe in order to overcome what was thought as obsolete and not modern. Tanzimat reforms seek not only to change the empire politically but also spatial through the modernization of its important harbor cities. Thessaloniki until 1912 was a vital part of the Ottoman Empire and its urban space was marked through its different inhabitants since its foundation on 315 BC. The old byzantine wall was demolished in 1865 and a new more modern city had to be constructed through other spatial initiatives. Thessaloniki because of its architecture is more comparable to other cities of the Ottoman Empire as Izmir and Istanbul and not to Athens influenced more from the neoclassical architectural style. A great number of buildings, which were built during this period of modernization, were influenced by the architectural style of Eclecticism, which was also applied in Western Europe as a general style of 19th century architecture after neo-classicism. In 1912 Thessaloniki became part of a Nation State, which tried also to become modern and European. The greek regime of Eleftherios Venizelos during the World war I and after the big fire in 1917 that destroyed a great part of the city saw Thessaloniki as a chance for Greece to acquire a more ‘European’ and ‘modern’ city especially through the elaboration of a ‘mega- plan’ in order to de-ottomanize its urban fabric. The well-known ‘Hebrard’s’ plan reparcelled completely the urban land and introduce a more ‘rationalistic’ typology in the urban design that of the building block, defined by vertical streets, big squares at the center of the intersection of great boulevards and the use of ‘holy’ antiquities as mnemonic topoi of a glorious and continuous past.
My area of interest had not at that time any of such ‘holy places’ that was important to the constructed Greek modernity, on the contrary disposed mainly material proofs of an unwanted past. This fact led to a very interesting progress in their ‘social life’ according to Appadurai during the 20th that my ethnographical research brought on the surface and made clear the reasons of the feeling of an emptiness that this place oozes today according to my informants.
Contacting ethnographical research in Thessaloniki between 2012 and 2015 I tried to search from below for such social and cultural practices and life styles in Thessaloniki. Especially, using the analytical categories of social class and material culture I tried to understand the way that an originally refugee settlement in Thessaloniki, through massive state initiatives but also through the personal engagement and effort of the people, became a completely well integrated part of the old city. My informants, all of them children of the first generation of refugees of Asian Minor, narrate their family stories of the first difficult years in the poor and not well organized refugee settlement of Kato Toumpa at the outskirts of the city. Through their ornaments, personal things and photographs, inside their modern apartments, they remember not only their poor past but also their hard efforts to become ‘Nikokirei’, creating a status of leaving that the current Crisis threatens to destroy.
In this presentation I will try to show the multiple ways that family photographs as material objects act and influence people in their everyday life. My informants of Kato Toumpa decorate their living rooms with framed photographs of their family members documenting in this way their personal social success in life, becoming part of the post war middle class of Thessaloniki. The subjects use these materials in order to argue for specific qualities and skills that define their belonging to a social class. The Family albums and the framed photographs compensate often the material loss of the previous generation and empower their owners to deal with the present financial crisis that threatens their social reproduction. Photographs as material objects are part of personal assemblages into them our informants of Thessaloniki find themselves and reconstruct their fragmented past.