Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Anthropology None Provided1 None Provided1 Anthropology 121, Ethnographic Accounts of Greek Culture This paper is based upon the biography of a couple that is living in Playiari, which is a village 25 km from Thessaloniki. The couple is three years married, after being four years engaged, and now they are living at a house of their own. They do not have any children, so far, but they have a dog whose name is Lambros. Their names are Tasos and Efi. He is the owner of a café and she is working at a branch of an insurance company. I met them almost six years ago when I got hired by Tasos as a waiter in his café, and I chose them for my paper because first of all I feel really comfortable with them and second because they are young so the research that is going to be done to be more vivid and up to date. What is going to be presented in this paper are the various information that I have obtained from them, for several aspects of their lives. Furthermore, what is to be accomplished is the comparison of their lives with those of their grandparents and alongside with this the comparison and contrast of these information with the ones in the articles that were covered in class. Firstly what is to be conferred are information about Tasos family. Tasos family originated from Kallipoli which was a suburb of Constantinople (Instanbul). They were living there before the destruction of Asia Minor and the exchange of population between Greece and Turkey taking place. When the exchange of the populations took place his grandfather moved straight to Playiari, which basically is a village composed of immigrants who came from there and at that point in time was nothing but a complex of 4-5 houses. Their residents were locals, who had conflicts with the incoming people, because they did not want others to claim land in that territory. Finally most of the immigrants got to claim and own a piece of land. Tasos was born 32 years ago in Edessa, a city close to Thessaloniki. When he was two years old his family moved in a village, which was located in the district(nomos) Pelas and it is called St.George. They remained there for about nine years, until Tasos became 11 years old, and after that they moved to Lakoma, a village in Halkidiki. From that village they moved, when Tasos was 16 years old, for the last time in Playiari. Tasos’ family was consisted of his father and mother, him and his sister Evi. His father work, being a priest, was the reason that they had resided in so many places. His whole family meaning his relatives(soi), is quite big. Due to the fact that his father had another two brothers, Tasos has fourteen cousins who live in Skydra, Playiari and Thessaloniki. Tasos’ family is a little bit different from all the other common families and that is that almost all the males in the family were priests. If he would become a priest he would be the 50th in the family, which gives him some privileges, but is something that he did not chose to follow. In 1988 his parents got a divorce. Tasos and his sister stayed with their mother, who was self-employed and was sowing clothes. Here we understand that the gender roles within the family are changing rapidly. Their mother is becoming everything for them, meaning that she has to complete men tasks often. Tasos then also was assigned different responsibilities than any other child of his age. We can say generally that the family was basically being supported by the mother and Tasos. He moved from his family house three years ago when he got married to Efi. On the other hand Efi’s family is totally different from Tasos. Efi was born in Thessaloniki 35 years ago. Her grandparents moved from Smyrni, a city in Asia Minor, to Thessaloniki and more specific to the territory of Ampelokipi. Her father is retired and her mother is a housewife. Her father has only one more brother and the relatives, only the cousins, on Efi’s side are 11. This is her second marriage, her first one was in 1985 in which she divorced in 1986. Her father was a very strict person which made the family be more patriarchal. This was the main reason for the first wedding taking place and falling apart, due to the fact that Efi wanted to be more independent and free so she chose to get married which was a fast and wrong decision. Around 1989 she met Tasos, who happened to work with her at that time in the same bar in Perea, another village close to Thessaloniki. They both are a really nice couple who love each other a lot but in order to understand more about them I will present more information for them and more specific for the way that they interact in the household and how they behave from their marriage and on. To begin with I would like to refer first to their marriage and after that to their household. Their marriage took place in Playiari in a chapel, and there was a reason for it to be done there because it is a custom the couple to get married in the groom’s village. As I mentioned before Tasos and Efi are married since 1995 but they have been living together before that. The first time that they resided together was in 1993, when they were still engaged. From 1993 to 1997 they did not have a house of their own which means that they were renting one. In 1997 Efi sold a house that she owned in Thessaloniki and bought a house in Playiari in which she lives together with Tasos. Tasos did not receive any dowry, which is something that is peculiar because most of the marriages that I have participated in my life were usually not like this one, the difference is that many people still like the marriage to be traditional. Tasos and Efi are a modern couple and have modern ideas. When I say that their marriage was not traditional I mean that first of all Tasos did not receive any dowry. Second because there was not any dowry there was not any showing of it. When I say showing I am refering to the tradition that before the weeding people can go to the brides house to see what things(dowry) she is going to take with her when she leaves her home. Another difference that they had is that they were living together before they got married which is something that is not usually done. One of the things that was similar to other weddings is the scene where the grooms relatives are walking him to church on the day of the wedding and that he cannot see the bride before the wedding ceremony. The way that they operate in the house is really different from the way that households used to operate before, and that is that women were doing all the things that are needed in the household, no matter how heavy the task is, and men were working outside the house, earning money which basically was the only income ‘entering’ the family. Moreover what I mean is that they are operating under a specific plan. The hours of their workplaces differ so sometimes there are slight changes in the schedule but usually they do not occur. Basically they are operating in a gender division of labor, which means that the various tasks are divided among them concerning the fact that he is a man and she is a woman, and what they like more doing(as they informed me). Tasos is usually doing the tasks that require more strength or that he is better at. These tasks are for example things like hanging the curtains, vacuum the house, moping, cleaning the fireplace, and all the work that is demanded in the yard of the house. On the contrary what Efi is doing are tasks that are characterized more as womanish. This line of tasks that Efi is doing involves things like cooking, washing and ironing the clothes. The only thing that they decided from the beginning to do together is the washing of the dog, because as they told me it is something that requires definitely two persons, for the specific dog. In addition to all this, the organizing of the economic activities of the couple is mainly organized by Efi. The decision is taken by both of them but the process is done usually by Efi. The economic ‘obligations’ that Tasos has, are generally all the bills. So, he has to pay all the bills like the electricity, telephone, gas, supermarket, and for the maintenance of the car and the motorbike. On the other hand Efi’s economic obligations are the payments of loans, checks and credit cards. Among all these they are also helping each other in their work too. What I mean is that Tasos is helping Efi in the insurance company and she is helping him in the café. This is happening because sometimes the overload of work that they have is a lot, so they need the help of each other. As we understand they have divided the various tasks among them equally. If we closely observe Efi and Tasos’ marriage we will see that they have major differences from other marriages and especially marriages that have taken place many years ago. The differences exist not only in the interacting within the house but also in the controlling of their economic activities. The major differences were starting first of all from the marriage. The way that people were getting married was different, as I told you before it was more traditional. Furthermore what was widely spread and performed was the sheet, which was a way of proving and revealing some things basically for the bride, and that thing is her virginity. This ‘ritual’ was performed before a lot in this part of Greece, but on this case even before the marriage because I was then working at the café, I was teasing Tasos about the sheet and he was making fun of it too, saying things like that he is going to poor red paint in order to paint the sheet and prove his wife’s virginity. Another thing that is the major difference between Tasos’ marriage and the older ones was the dowry. Tasos did not take any dowry, and from what I have observed in the marriages that I have attended, most of the people nowadays do not care if they are going to take or not. The dowry was one of the main steps that were taking place in marriages before and sometimes it was a part of a pre-marriage deal that the groom is going to receive a specific amount of dowry. Now when the matter comes in the operating of the household, in this sector we are going to find big differences. Firstly I would like to refer to the way that the couples or families were taking decisions and that way was the father who was deciding almost about everything. I think that this was happening because the father had also the economic superiority, meaning that he was earning all the money that was coming in the house and he was paying all the bills and expenses that were occurring. This a great difference that we see between this and the article about Amouliani an island in Halkidiki. There the women were essential to the economy of the household. Even the public prestige that women were getting was higher sometimes from men, and that was happening due to the fact that the social prestige of the whole family was depended on the household and the opinion of other people about it. As Tasos is saying their families were both patriarchal in which the father was setting the rules and everybody else adhered. In this kind of marriages usually the wife was moving in the husbands house in which she stayed for the rest of her life. Another big difference was that usually the wife was doing all the work around the house that was necessary. This was happening because the husband was working and bringing all the money, so his wife was becoming a housewife. Alongside with this another big difference is that for example Tasos family used to live in separate houses but really close to each other in order to feel safe and secure. This was happening to Efi’s family also and but not in the same degree because they were living in Thessaloniki. Now Tasos and Efi are living alone and far from their parents. The reason for this situation is that firstly they do not feel insecure, of managing alone and not needing their relatives help; and secondly they want their privacy even from their parents and relatives. Even when the issue is coming to the house that they lived, the matter is that even though the house is in the place that the husband grew up, it belongs to Efi because it was bought by her money. Also another big distinction that they have is that they are helping each other within the household and in their jobs too, which is something that was not happening before in their grandparents families. Generally we can say that nowadays marriage looks more like a cooperation between the two parts and each part is contributing whatever it can; but also the important thing is that the various tasks are divided so that the results are going to be better. Again in the example of Amuliani we see that the couple was working like a partnership not based only in a gender division of labor “but also on a division of financial responsibility that underscores the importance of the woman’s role”(104). Furthermore we see that the couple together was deciding what investments are going to be made. And finally the concept that the household was seen as a financial partnership is also proving the similarities that exist. In general, if we observe this specific situation and the circumstances that were created, we can make an analysis in a comparison/contrast context with the articles that were presented in class. From the first article that was studied in class and that is the ‘Kinship, class and selective migration’ we see that there are some major differences like for example the dowry and what was happening when parents did not have to give anything, then the result was that their daughter would have to work and on the other hand if she was educated she did not need dowry at all. While in Tasos situation we see that he did not receive any dowry. In the second article that we covered, which was the one about the ‘Return migrants and tourist development’ we saw that the father and mother were supporting their families, and grandparents were usually playing the role of the baby-sitter. This is something that is happening even now and it is in fact really common among many families. My opinion is that this is the result of a really fast rhythm of life that almost all the people are involved in, and it is the earning of as much as possible of goods that can be provided for their children. Moreover, in the article of ‘Women’s roles and House form and Decoration in Eressos, Greece’, we acquired information that were describing for example that the house was built by the father and the son and that it had ground floors, which is something that is not happening now because mainly for the size that houses have, and also that the mother was only looking after the household. These characteristics are not applied anymore because first of all the size of the houses is different and women nowadays are operating in a different way. In this specific article we learned that the only thing that remained stable in all the three periods that are described is the iconostasi. This thing is something that you see in many houses even nowadays, even Tasos and Efi that are supposed to be one of the newly married couples are having one in their house and it is one of the first things that was placed in it. In another article that was describing to us Amorgos and it was titled as ‘Family and Work’, we saw that women were mainly working in the household and they were helping the parents while on this specific case that we examine we see that Efi is working, and more of the women nowadays are working too. On the contrary in the next article that we examined and it was called ‘Introducing the Nikokyra’ we see that men were involved in the household actively and the household was presented as an economic system. The explanation that we gave was that these people were immigrants from Asia Minor and they were open in new ideas(males = females) so the interaction between them was different. This is a similarity as we see with Tasos and Efi, because it is alike the way that they are operating within the household. In addition to all this in the article that was titled ‘Sisters in Christ’ we see many similarities and differences. We see that there is a distinction within the household and it involves the attribution of the household to women and the attribution of the economy to men; this is something that is not happening today that much since women are contributing financially in the household too. Also we see that the women were moving to their husband’s house and they were taking their husbands name which is something that is not happening now because women are independent economically so they need to use their name in their job. Some things of these still exist and others do not. For example Efi after she got married she took Tasos’ name too and now she has two last names. She had to do like this because she is an independent person economically and has a work of her own, which requires her name for example to take some money from the bank. When the matter comes to the household and how it operates the roles of the couple are changing because as I mentioned before nowadays women are independent economically which means that they have the least more freedom. So all these have as a result the involvement of the husband in the household and the change of the woman’s role in the workplace. Finally, after all this analysis we see that the roles of the two genders are changing and that women are becoming more and more independent. But on the other hand men are becoming more thoughtful about matters that involve the household, which is something that is going to benefit all of us. The transformation that the household interactions are going through and the changing that is taking place is something that hopefully is going to make things even better, and nobody is going to feel oppressed by anybody. Bibliography: Word Count: 3226
Copyright © 2005 College Term Papers, INC All Rights Reserved.