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The people of Vassilikos, farmers and tourist entrepreneurs on the Greek island of Zakynthos, are involved in a bitter environmental dispute concerning the conservation of sea turtles. Against the environmentalists' practices and ideals they set their own culture of relating to the land, cultivation, wild and domestic animals.
Written from an anthropological perspective, this book puts forward the idea that a thorough study of indigenous cultures is a fundamental step to understanding conflicts over the environment. For this purpose, the book offers a detailed account of the cultural depth and richness of the human environmental relationship in Vassilikos, focusing on the engagement of its inhabitants with diverse aspects of the local environment, such as animal care, agriculture, tourism and hunting.
About the author
Dimitrios Theodossopoulos is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Kent. He has conducted research in Panama and Greece, focusing on processes of resistance, exoticisation, authenticity, tourism, environmentalism, and the politics of cultural representation and protest. He is author of Exoticisation Undressed (2016) and Troubles with Turtles (2003) and editor of De-Pathologising Resistance (2015), Great Expectations (2011), United in Discontent (2010), and When Greeks Think about Turks (2007).
Summary
Based on fieldwork on the socioeconomic aspects of conservation on the tourist destination of Zakynthos, Theodossopoulos (social anthropology, U. of Bristol) shifted his original focus from a general analysis of emerging Greek environmental politics to an ethnographic case study of the values shapin
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“…the book has a number of things to recommend it, particularly for undergraduate teaching, as its scale and readability would be an ethnographic asset for courses on, for example, anthropology and the environment. Its material also provides a number of teachable opportunities, both critically and historically.” · Human Ecology
“Though predominantly informative about Greek rural life, the book constitutes an illustrative and informative account about human relationships with the natural world more generally.” · H-Environment
