The Making of the Modern Greek Family: Marriage and Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Athens by Constantina Bada and Paul Sant Cassia (1992, Hardcover)

Key Details
Author:	Paul Sant Cassia, Constantina Bada
Language:	English
Publisher:	Cambridge Univ Pr
Series:	Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology
Format:	Hardcover
ISBN-10:	0521400813
ISBN-13:	9780521400817

Size
Thickness:	1 in
Weight:	20 oz

Publisher's Note
Paul Sant Cassia and Constantina Bada use matrimonial contracts, travelers' accounts, memoirs and popular literature to show how distinctive forms of marriage, kinship and property transmission evolved in nineteenth-century Athens. The importance of Athens as a center for migration and the source of national culture, ensured that these patterns became a feature of wider Greek society, even into the twentieth century. Particularly significant was the impact that massive cash transactions and the growth of the dowry had on the position of women.

This study deals with a specific set of institutions in nineteenth-century Athens. Relying on matrimonial contracts, travellers' accounts, memoirs and popular literature, the authors show how distinctive forms of marriage, kinship and property transmission evolved in Athens in the nineteenth century. These forms then became a feature of wider Greek society which continued into the twentieth century. Greece was the first post-colonial modern nation state in Europe whose national identity was created largely by peasants who had migrated to the city. As Athenian society became less agrarian, a new mercantile group superseded and incorporated previous elites and went on to dominate and control the new resources of the nation state. Such groups developed their own, more mobile, systems of property transmission, mostly in response to external pressures of a political and economic character. This is a persuasive piece of detective work, full of brilliant insights, which has advanced our knowledge of modern Greece. It is a model for scholarship on the development of family and other 'intimate' ideologies where nation states encroach upon local consciousness.