Call for Papers
James Verinis
Call for Papers
Journal of Modern Greek Studies: Special Section
Towards the Cultural Ecology of Greece and Cyprus: a state of the art
October 2026 or May 2027
In the eco-phenomenologies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Donna Haraway, and Jane Bennett, non-humans (including non-life) become interlocutors. Chiasmic encounters occur, as these interlocutors trade places perceiving and being perceived, offering new possibilities for ecological consciousness; “A fox that has seen me cannot return to being a fox that has not encountered a human” (Falke, in Karpouzou and Zampaki 2023:276).
Elizabeth Povinelli, Eduardo Kohn, Anna Tsing, Tim Ingold, amongst many other anthropologists at this point, problematize such encounters in their ethnographic work. Like critical post-humanist philosophy and literature, contemporary environmental anthropology describes a movement from “being to assemblage, biopower to geontopower” (Povinelli 14)- towards a symbiocenic relationality (Kohn 2013). As Povinelli writes (2016:9); “it is certainly the case that the statement ‘clearly, x humans are more important than y rocks’ continues to be made, persuade, stop political discourse. But what interests me… is the slight hesitation, the pause, the intake of breath that now can interrupt an immediate assent”.
It is our endeavor, in this Special Section of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, to identify the grounds upon which such a post-human, ontological (or ontogenetic (Ingold 2018)) turn has been made in the anthropology of modern Greece and Cyprus. Along with non-human biological life forms, rocks and other “things” are now hybridities like and with us, not merely under our [political] control. A more “vital materialism”, unlike an historical materialism preoccupied with economic infrastructures (Bennett 2010), meets 21st century challenges- “the increasingly unavoidable entanglements of Life and Nonlife in contemporary capitalism” (Povinelli 41). Such work should disavow us of the uncomplicated knowledge that we got ourselves into the anthropocenic environmental mess we are in, along with the idea that we are the only ones who can get everyone (and everything) out. Yet this is not a call to elude human responsibilities for certain ecological catastrophes- to deny that man is an animal who has turned against the sustenance of his own life (Colebrook, in Karpouzou and Zampaki 2023). Nor is it an opportunity to ignore “real” world incarnations of neoliberal human power. The purpose, rather, is to explore these as well as corresponding revelations so as to add dimension and credibility to 21st century anthropological investigations of Greeks and Cypriots in “their” environments.
It can be argued that the cultural ecology or environmental anthropology of modern Greece began with the publication of Dimitris Theodossopoulos’s “Turtles, Farmers and Ecologists: the cultural reason behind a community’s resistance to environmental conservation” in 1997, and then his subsequent book manuscript on the subject (2003). Theodossopoulos’s approach to cultural ecology honed in on the common Byzantine, Eastern Orthodox Christian theological understanding of relations between humans and non-humans. The primary research questions which should orient contributions to this Special Section are as follows:
- What can contemporary anthropological scholarship tell us about the various ways Greeks as well as Cypriots have long been imagining ecological assemblages or relationships?
- What can such critical scholarship tell us about the ways in which Greeks and Cypriots have begun to imagine or reevaluate ecological assemblages vis-à-vis recent socio-economic and political crises (such as unprecedented human migration flows or severe economic austerity measures) as well as environmental crises (such as wildfires or floods)?
To elaborate on the abovementioned primary research questions, we invite work in anthropology as well as other related disciplines (e.g., cultural, media, and landscape studies and zooarchaeology) on specific themes such as those below, in terms of their ethnographic content and their intellectual foundations:
- Multispecies relations or symbioses with the animal, the plant, the mineral, the chemical, as well as the technological (e.g., ανεμογεννήτριες and φωτοβολταϊκά).
- Contemporary [re]conceptions of montane, island, agricultural, pastoral, rural, heritage, [renewable] energy, and other so-called “landscapes” as well as marine/aquatic environments in ecological terms.
- Cultural responses to ecological crises such as wildfires and floods, but also intense heat and drought, mining regimes, deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil infertility and erosion, petrochemical exposure and environmental carcinogenesis, “invasive” species, zoonotic diseases, and so on.
- Eco-catastrophe and the embodiment of environmental trauma.
- Solidarity, decolonial, [settler] colonial, and other socio-political movements which, in response to political-economic trouble, reflect significantly reconfigured (post-human or otherwise) interpretations of ecological assemblages.
The publication of such a collection of work in this Special Section is intended to enhance epistemic grounds, with new ecological sensibilities, upon which to manage environmental as well as social and political predicaments in and beyond the Greek context.
Those interested in participating should submit an approximately 500 word abstract as well as a biographical note to James Verinis and Anastasia Karakasidou using the Journal of Modern Greek Studies electronic submission platform (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jmgs) by June 1st, 2025 and preface the title of their submission with “Greek and Cypriot Cultural Ecology”, e.g. “Greek and Cypriot Cultural Ecology –TITLE HERE”.
James Verinis, jver...@rwu.edu
Anastasia Karakasidou, akar...@wellesley.edu
James Verinis
Call for Papers (reminder)
Journal of Modern Greek Studies: Special Section
Towards the Cultural Ecology of Greece and Cyprus: a state of the art
October 2026 or May 2027
In the eco-phenomenologies of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Donna Haraway, and Jane Bennett, non-humans (including non-life) become interlocutors. Chiasmic encounters occur, as these interlocutors trade places perceiving and being perceived, offering new possibilities for ecological consciousness; “A fox that has seen me cannot return to being a fox that has not encountered a human” (Falke, in Karpouzou and Zampaki 2023:276).
Elizabeth Povinelli, Eduardo Kohn, Anna Tsing, Tim Ingold, amongst many other anthropologists at this point, problematize such encounters in their ethnographic work. Like critical post-humanist philosophy and literature, contemporary environmental anthropology describes a movement from “being to assemblage, biopower to geontopower” (Povinelli 14)- towards a symbiocenic relationality (Kohn 2013). As Povinelli writes (2016:9); “it is certainly the case that the statement ‘clearly, x humans are more important than y rocks’ continues to be made, persuade, stop political discourse. But what interests me… is the slight hesitation, the pause, the intake of breath that now can interrupt an immediate assent”.
It is our endeavor, in this Special Section of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies, to identify the extent to which such a post-human, ontological (or ontogenetic (Ingold 2018)) turn has been made in the anthropology of modern Greece and Cyprus. Along with non-human biological life forms, rocks and other “things” are now hybridities like and with us, not merely under our [political] control. A more “vital materialism”, unlike an historical materialism preoccupied with economic infrastructures (Bennett 2010), meets 21st century challenges- “the increasingly unavoidable entanglements of Life and Nonlife in contemporary capitalism” (Povinelli 41).
Such work should disavow us of the uncomplicated knowledge that we got ourselves into the anthropocenic environmental mess we are in, along with the idea that we are the only ones who can get everyone (and everything) out. Yet this is not a call to elude human responsibilities for certain ecological catastrophes- to deny that man is an animal who has turned against the sustenance of his own life (Colebrook, in Karpouzou and Zampaki 2023). Nor is it an opportunity to ignore “real” world incarnations of neoliberal human power. The purpose, rather, is to explore these as well as corresponding revelations so as to add dimension and credibility to 21st century anthropological investigations of Greeks and Cypriots in “their” environments.
It can be argued that the cultural ecology or environmental anthropology of modern Greece began with the publication of Dimitris Theodossopoulos’s “Turtles, Farmers and Ecologists: the cultural reason behind a community’s resistance to environmental conservation” in 1997, and then his subsequent book manuscript on the subject (2003). Theodossopoulos’s approach to cultural ecology honed in on the common Byzantine, Eastern Orthodox Christian theological understanding of relations between humans and non-humans. The primary research questions which should orient contributions to this Special Section are as follows:
- What can contemporary anthropological scholarship tell us about the various ways Greeks as well as Cypriots have long been imagining ecological assemblages or relationships?
- What can such critical scholarship tell us about the ways in which Greeks and Cypriots have begun to imagine or reevaluate ecological assemblages vis-à-vis recent socio-economic and political crises (such as unprecedented human migration flows or severe economic austerity measures) as well as environmental crises (such as wildfires or floods)?
To elaborate on the abovementioned primary research questions, we invite work in anthropology as well as other related disciplines (e.g., cultural, media, and landscape studies and zooarchaeology) on specific themes such as those below, in terms of their ethnographic content and their intellectual foundations:
- Multispecies relations or symbioses with the animal, the plant, the mineral, the chemical, as well as the technological (e.g., ανεμογεννήτριες and φωτοβολταϊκά).
- Contemporary [re]conceptions of montane, island, agricultural, pastoral, rural, heritage, [renewable] energy, and other so-called “landscapes” as well as marine/aquatic environments in ecological terms.
- Cultural responses to ecological crises such as wildfires and floods, but also intense heat and drought, mining regimes, deforestation, biodiversity loss, soil infertility and erosion, petrochemical exposure and environmental carcinogenesis, “invasive” species, zoonotic diseases, and so on.
- Eco-catastrophe and the embodiment of environmental trauma.
- Solidarity, decolonial, [settler] colonial, and other socio-political movements which, in response to political-economic trouble, reflect significantly reconfigured (post-human or otherwise) interpretations of ecological assemblages.
The publication of such a collection of work in this Special Section is intended to enhance epistemic grounds, with new ecological sensibilities, upon which to manage environmental as well as social and political predicaments in and beyond the Greek context.
Those interested in participating should submit an approximately 500 word abstract as well as a biographical note to James Verinis and Anastasia Karakasidou using the Journal of Modern Greek Studies electronic submission platform (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jmgs) by June 1st, 2025 and preface the title of their submission with “Greek and Cypriot Cultural Ecology”, e.g. “Greek and Cypriot Cultural Ecology –TITLE HERE”. Alternatively, simply email your submission to the co-editors directly.