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Persistence of the vernacular: Aminority shaping urban formDayana Salazar aa Urban and Regional Planning Department , San José StateUniversity , San José, CA, 95192–0185, USA E-mail:Published online: 27 Apr 2007.

To cite this article: Dayana Salazar (1998) Persistence of the vernacular: A minority shapingurban form, Journal of Urban Design, 3:3, 303-330, DOI: 10.1080/13574809808724431

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Journal of Urban Design, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1998 303

Persistence of the Vernacular: A Minority ShapingUrban Form

DAYANA SALAZAR

ABSTRACT This paper presents the emerging expression of architectural identity inDekaokto, a refugee neighbourhood built by the Greek government in the northernAegean port of Kavala. Ever since the refugees occupied Dekaokto in the mid-1920s,houses and neighbourhood space have been gradually appropriated and modified torestore a way of life left behind in Asia Minor. Refugee culture was created andre-created throughout decades despite official attempts to purge the new Greek state ofits Turkish-oriental influence. By examining the refugee experience, we witness theinvention of a 'high', or national culture, through its inherent opposition to the 'low',or local culture. High culture is traced here through the neoclassicist national pro-gramme officially adopted and promoted by the Greek state in public architecture.Evidence of refugee 'low-culture', on the other hand, is to be found in the livingtestimony of its domestic architecture.

This paper presents the emerging expression of architectural identity inDekaokto, a refugee neighbourhood built by the Greek government in thenorthern Aegean port of Kavala (Figure 1). In an attempt to re-create the life leftbehind in Asia Minor, refugees have adapted houses and open spaces in theirneighbourhood to fit a group memory.

Dekaokto originates in the single historic event of the population exchangetreaty signed in Lausanne by the young Greek and Turkish states under theauspices of the Allied powers. As a result, people were expelled from thevillages, the cities and the land they had inhabited for generations. The exchangeagreement read:

As from 1st May, 1923, there shall take place a compulsory exchange ofTurkish nationals of the Greek Orthodox religion established on Turk-ish territory [except the Greek inhabitants of Constantinople] and ofGreek nationals of Muslim religion established on Greek territory[except the Muslim inhabitants of Western Thrace].

These persons shall not return to live in Turkey or Greece without theauthorization of the Turkish or the Greek government respectively.(Pentzopoulos, 1962, p. 67)

Hence, faith was used as the sole indicator of 'Greekness'. This criterion forclassification has left an imprint in Greece, where national identity is generallyequated with religion and by extension with language.

Dayana Salazar, Urban and Regional Planning Department, San José State University, San José, CA95192-0185,USA. Email: salazar@sjsuvm1.sjsu.edu

1357-4809/98/030303-28 © 1998 Carfax Publishing Ltd

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V> Serb'dBULGARIA

sopnia

1832

1864

1881

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• 1920 1922, „(Treaty of Sevres)

n 1922

1947

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Figure 1. The expansion of Greece.

Even though the exodus of Greeks from Asia Minor was generally presentedas the return to their homeland, in reality, the refugees were perceived at a locallevel as 'The Other', a foreign people different from the natives. In an attemptto create a national identity and therefore purge all foreign—meaning Turkish orOriental—influences, the cultural baggage of Asia Minor Greeks was drivenunderground (Bouras, 1983; Couroucli, 1993; Danforth, 1993; Hirschon, 1989;Hoist, 1975; Layoun, 1990; Monos, 1987; Pentzopoulos, 1962).

Despite this official antipathy, urban refugee culture was created and re-created uninterruptedly throughout decades of hostility and discrimination. Byexamining the refugee experience, we witness the invention of a 'high',1 ornational culture, through its inherent opposition to the 'low', or local culture.High culture is traced here through the neoclassicist or classic revival—readEuropean or western—national programme adopted and promoted by the Greekstate in its urbanization process. Evidence of refugee 'low culture' is to be foundin the collective change and adaptation of Dekaokto's domestic architecture. Wewitness in Dekaokto a quiet path of resistance via the construction and re-con-struction of neighbourhood space and social structures.2

Building construction has been widely used to assist the creation of a nationalconscience (AlSayyad, 1992). Architecture (with a capital A), and building (witha lower case b) as modes of self-representation illustrate the opposition betweenthe invented tradition promoted at the centre, and the customary traditionemerging from the compact social fabric of this urban refugee neighbourhood.

Dekaokto's process of transformation illustrates a group's search for identitythrough the control and change of its physical space. This search proved to befar more pervasive and adaptable than the national cultural programme pro-

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Persistence of the Vernacular 305

moted by the state and its ruling elite. We learn from this experience that thequest for community and communal identity follows a road of its own, parallelto and independent from that of the creation of a national 'high culture'. We alsolearn that, even though these two roads exist and are defined mainly throughtheir inherent opposition, they occasionally merge.3

A Note on Methodology

Documentation of refugee adaptation in Dekaokto was collected using a combi-nation of field observation of the daily life in the neighbourhood, a detailedinventory (100% sample) of the dwelling units, as well as in-depth interviewswith a sample of residents from each block facilitated by an interpreter. Theresults of these first-hand observations and interviews were analysed withrespect to the larger framework of national identities throughout the world andin other ex-Ottoman provinces (Anderson, 1983; Celik, 1992; Gellner, 1983;Hobsbawm, 1990; Karpat, 1973; Kedourie, 1993; Mitchell 1988).4

In addition, historic records of state policies regarding refugee settlementefforts as well as accounts of urban refugee social structures provided thebackdrop against which to interpret Dekaokto's experience (Bottomley, 1992;Clogg, 1992; Couroucli, 1993; Cowan, 1990; Eddy, 1931; Hirschon & Gold, 1982;Hoist, 1975; Layoun, 1990; Monos, 1987; Vaiou, 1992; Yannoulopoulos, 1981).

Demographic Upheaval in Greek Macedonia

By the end of 1923, Greece received an influx of approximately one and a halfmillion refugees brought about by the Lausanne exchange agreement. Therefugees added one-quarter to the total population in mainland Greece.

It was the first time in history that the transfer of large ethnic groups was triedas a means to separate 'nationally intermingled people'. This unprecedentedexchange experiment gave moral and official backing to massive deportationsand even extermination of entire ethnic communities in Eastern and WesternEurope from then on.5

According to a 1928 population census, refugees comprised 45% of theMacedonian population, and 35% of the residents of Thrace (Pentzopoulos, 1962,p. 183) (Figure 2). Located at the crossroads of the Balkan peninsula, theMacedonian plains have been subjected to continuous migratory movements,some natural and some imposed by military campaigns, which have repeatedlychanged the region's ethnic composition. As many as 17 mass movements ofentire populations took place in Macedonia between 1912 and 1924 (Pallis, 1925,p. 315).6

Kavala, the second largest city of Greek Macedonia, occupied a strategiclocation on the Egnatia Corridor, a major trade route connecting the eastern andwestern portions of the Roman and later Byzantine empires. It was underOttoman rule as late as 1912, and has been occupied by Bulgaria three timessince then (in 1912-13, 1916-18 and 1942-44). The Turkish influence in the cityis tangible, especially in the Panagia peninsula, the location of the Ottomancitadel and its still-standing; multi-domed Imaret.7

With its extraordinary tradition of diversity, Kavala is a prime indicator of thedemographic impact of the population exchange in Greece. In 1912 the city'spopulation comprised 29% Greeks, 69% Muslims and 2% 'Miscellaneous': Jews

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V;.v ,y< \(\ Periyiali

Neapoiis-Firct Cora of Kavala

16th Century1670

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Refugee Settlements 1922-1930

j ] Present City Umiis

Present City Center

nn ®Figure 2. The historic expansion of Kavala.

(mostly Ladino-speaking Sephardic Jews), Vlachs and Albanians. In 1926, afterpopulation exchanges with Turkey and Bulgaria, Kavala was inhabited exclu-sively by 'Greeks'. In 1928, over half of its population of 49 980 were refugeeswho arrived after the Asia Minor disaster (Eddy, 1931; Pentzopoulos, 1962). Themajority of Kavala's refugee population relocated from cities such as Smyrnaand Istanbul. They were by and large a highly educated group of people, whowere forced to leave their properties as well as their livelihood in Asia Minor(Romanos, 1989).

The Hellenization of Kavala encapsulates the history of minorities during thefirst half of this century. In less than a decade Greek society was transformedfrom a typically multireligious, multiracial, multilinguistic society from Ottomantimes, into a nearly 'pure' Christian Orthodox one. Thus, the Greek govern-ment's policy of 'Hellenizing' Macedonia was well on its way to becomingimplemented. This colonizing policy in northern Greece was dictated by theneed to defend the territorial integrity of the country against Bulgarian claims tothe region, as Colonel Gonatas, Prime Minister from 1922 to 1923, acknow-ledged:

We settled the rural refugees particularly near the borders of the statein order to consolidate the frontier populations so that they coulddefend themselves against irregular aggressions. (Gonatas 1930, p. 265)

The overall policy of "transforming a pluralistic society into a homogeneousone by removing the nationally divergent groups and replacing them byindividuals who feel akin to their new country" (Pentzopoulos, 1962, p. 199),was also, on the surface, implemented. However, the myth of a neatly homoge-neous Greek society was soon to be dispelled through the experiences ofassimilation of the Greek refugees.

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Refugee Housing

The Hellenization policy placed a great deal of pressure on Athens, Piraeus,Salonica (Thessaloniki) and Kavala. As the centre of the Greek tobacco industry,Kavala attracted a floating population from throughout the country who flockedto the city, hoping to find work. In 1928, the Refugee Settlement Commissionestimated that 30% of all tobacco workers in Greece were in Kavala. Therefugees, however, were not successful in competing with the natives for jobs inthe city (Eddy, 1931, p. 193).

In order to cope with the need to shelter masses of refugees, the GreekGovernment, with assistance from the League of Nations, applied a far-reachingscheme of urban settlement by building dwellings on the outskirts of main cities,where job opportunities were greater. Refugees were also relocated in the housesleft behind by the expatriate Muslims (Eddy, 1931; Pentzopoulos, 1962).

However, the challenge of providing housing for half of Kavala's totalpopulation proved great. Upon arrival, the refugees were settled in massoutdoor facilities and warehouses immediately surrounding the harbour area.Even though they were considered temporary accommodations, most refugeesstayed in the shelters for about six months, and some had to remain there for upto a year (Romanos & Brott, 1989, p. 17).

During 1926-27, the Greek Government built three refugee housing pro-jects on what was then the outskirts of Kavala: Dekaokto, Pentakosia and Horafa(Salazar, 1990, p. 13) (Figure 2). Dekaokto is perched on mountainous terrainoverlooking the Aegean sea, 2 km to the north-west of the Panagia peninsula(Figure 3). Today, it is a clear representative of a refugee settlement, distinctivefrom the homogenized remainder fabric of the city where modernization hastaken a heavy toll. Given its topographical predominance on the northernhills of Kavala, Dekaokto's tile-covered roofs are visible from afar, providinga contrast with the rest of the city which is generally covered by five to six-storey apartment buildings with metal and concrete balconies alongside theirfagade.8

The construction of refugee housing served as a vehicle for implementing theGreek nationalist programme, and an opportunity to speed up the moderniza-tion of the state. Efforts were concentrated on the alignment of streets and theuse of a rectangular grid in city plans with a strong mandate to rid cities in therecently liberated territories of their 'Turkish-oriental' appearance (Tsoulouvis,1987, p. 502). This anti-oriental, modernizing policy is recorded by DimitriPentzopoulos in the following passage:

The settlement suburbs developed into independent municipalities and"constituted the so-called eighth miracle". Even in the smaller towns,the refugee quarters, with their neat, practical houses and their widestreets, contrasted vividly with the old neighborhoods dominated bythe oriental-type dwellings. "It is no exaggeration to say", wrote SirJohn Campbell [first Vice Chairman of the Refugee Settlement Com-mission from 1924 to 1927], "that when visiting the refugee quarters inthe majority of the towns in Macedonia and Thrace, one steps from theseventeenth to the twentieth century". (Pentzopoulos, 1962, p. 115)

Hence, in order to replace the irregularity of the 'Turkish' street pattern with apattern that would reflect an emerging national consciousness, the intellectual

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Persistence of the Vernacular 309

elite (sponsored by European powers) chose to advocate the ancient Greekclassic tradition as the nation's 'style' of representation.9 In an effort to identifyit closely with the West, and distance it from the 'Orient'10 the language andimage of neoclassicism was appropriated as an iconographic bridge to providean apparent historical continuum with Ancient Greece—legitimizing a claim tofatherland and culture.

Neoclassicism moved in promptly to replace traditional architectural forms,along with all forms of popular expression deemed to have a strong 'Turkish'flavour which were openly discouraged and replaced with western models.11

Meanwhile, Greek urbanism followed similar principles to those behind baroqueor monumental civic design projects already well established in Europeancapitals. The model for all of these interventions was invariably Baron EugeneHaussman's reconstruction of Paris, with avenues and monuments lining theentire city.12

Dekaokto's street and block layout resulted in a modified, but fairly strictgeometrical grid superimposed on steep terrain that reached a 30% slope atcertain points. The building blocks follow what is essentially an axial structurealong Thrakis Street as the main 'backbone' of the settlement, with straight,secondary streets nearly perpendicular to it (Figure 4). At an average of 15 m,these secondary streets are quite wide by the standards of the city at the time.The main north-south axis connects three regularized open spaces, with a largecentral space intended to function as the core of the neighbourhood, in thetradition of grand European plazas and squares. Becoming part of Europe wasevidently the aim of Greek reconstruction, as reflected in the refugee housingprogramme.

The individual housing units built originally in Dekaokto also contributed,though modestly, to the aspiration of a 'cultural nationhood', by making adeparture from the Ottoman past. There were three typical housing units: typesA, B, Cl and its two-storey variation, C2 (Figure 5, 6). These spartan structuresfollow a strict tripartite (base-body-roof), symmetrical facade composition, werethe closed planes—or solid walls—dominate over the openings—or voids. Theregularity of their narrow vertical fenestration pattern is interrupted by framingmouldings, which are the only detail added to the essentially bare volume of thehouse. The overall mass of the house follows a geometric ratio formula for eachof its composite sub-volumes. All of these characteristics invest Dekaokto'soriginal housing units with a distinctive neoclassic flavour in direct oppositionto the vernacular models.

The units built in Dekaokto provided shelter for approximately 800 families.Plots surrounding the original core and in between blocks were left open andonly built individually in years to come. Initially several families lived in eachunit, sharing a kitchen and bathroom facilities. With time, some original settlerswere given property in Kalamitsa, 1 km to the west of Dekaokto (Romanos &Brott, 1989, p. 18). However, given the legal structure of refugee settlementefforts, most houses were not sold but rented to the settlers until recently. Inaddition, the houses have been continuously subdivided, and then divided againto provide dowries for marrying daughters. Even when the titles were straight-ened out and houses could be sold to the refugees, many simply refused to paythe nominal sum for their titles since for most urban refugees these housingunits constituted the only compensation for everything they had lost in theexodus.

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••••\ \V-*V>%r< r^sly «S\/

Main AxisSecondary AxesOpen Spaces

0 25 50 100 mt.

Figure 4. Axial structure of Dekaokto.

Partly due to this legal entanglement of ownership patterns, only a smallnumber (14%) of the original units had been either razed and replaced with newstructures, or the original structure had been entirely obscured with newconstruction (Figure 7).

Of the remaining structures, 49% had undergone relatively modest alterations,affecting up to one-quarter of the entire street facade. These small changes took

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wmmmmi

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Figure 5. Building types in Dekaokto.

the form of minor window and door alterations, as well as small balconies andverandas added to the basic volume of the house (see Figure 8 for examples ofalterations).

Some 30% of the structures had experienced moderate intervention of up tohalf of the original facade plane. Moderate intervention was typically found on

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Figure 6. Original house types in Dekaokto.

volumetric additions (balconies, verandas, projecting rooms) and significantalterations to the fenestration pattern of the original house.

A smaller number (7%) of the housing units had been substantially alteredwith volumes and structures that covered up to three-quarters of the buildingfront, including two-storey cement-and-metal verandas wrapped round theentire length of the facade.

However, under all of these various degrees of transformation, the underlyingoriginal structure of the neighbourhood was discernible at the time of this study,enabling us to backtrack the road of change amidst apparent continuity.

The Creation of a Refugee Subculture

The population exchange was viewed as the means of producing a homoge-neous and harmonious society encompassing the entire brotherhood of theGreek race within the modern borders of the state, by uprooting the complicated'mess' that cultural and ethnic diversity brought about. Even though thestatistics regarding the population composition of the Greek state after thepopulation exchange of the 1920s describe an overwhelmingly ethnic and,

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%

I. *fe?/

ru Original Stat«-Butt Units

MooerrteSubstantial

6 25 50 100 mt H I RepOcemedt

Figure 7. Degrees of intervention in Dekaokto.

assumedly, culturally homogeneous nation, the reality of the refugee experiencetestifies to the contrary. The refugees were intimately associated with theirTurkish heritage, a fact perpetuated not only by the local Greeks—Autochthons—but by the refugees—Heterochthons—13 themselves. Differences were stressed at

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Minor Changes

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Figure 8. Samples of intervention types in Dekaokto.

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Persistence of the Vernacular 315

yet another level by the idiosyncrasies, real or perceived, of distinct Hellenicsubcultures among the uprooted population.

Until the exchange of populations of 1923-24, there were very large Greekpopulations scattered throughout Asia Minor. The majority of Ottoman Greekswere Ionians14 living along the Aegean coastline, in Eastern Thrace, around theshores of the Sea of Marmara, and particularly in large seaport cities such asConstantinople, Smyrna and Trebizond. There were also several Greek groups inthe interior of Anatolia, called upon their arrival to Greece Tourkomerites (liter-ally, from the Turkish side), or Anatolites (orientals) (Hirschon, 1989, p. 24). Inthese parts of Asia Minor, as in Constantinople itself, many of the Greeks wereTurkish-speaking.15

After the exodus, regional differences and associations among the Hete-rochthons became even more accentuated in refugee neighbourhoods. Theseregional identities, directly transplanted from their former lives in Asia Minor,were maintained through several decades. Regional identity was manifested innegative and positive stereotypes used to characterize behaviour, lifestyle,individual qualities, and even residential districts.16 Even today, older refugeesin Dekaokto refer to others from the same Asia Minor town as a 'fellow country(wo)man'. The term is extended to their children and grandchildren.

The deep cleavage ingrained in the relations between native Greeks, theAutochthons, and the newcomers, the Heterochthons, was far more pervasive anddamaging than this sense of regional differences between refugees. Assimilationdid not occur as smoothly as envisioned by the central government, and therefugees as well as the natives perpetuated a perception of belonging todissimilar, and perhaps even incompatible, social groups. Dimitri Pentzopoulosinvokes the voice of the nation in his account of the refugees' 'lack of assimi-lation', revealing a sense of disappointment when the expatriates refused to shedan inherited millenary culture in order to comply in an orderly manner with anational, homogenizing pan-Hellenic plan:

Many of the expatriates who lived in the cities, however, showed aconspicuous reluctance to make the required adjustment [emphasisadded]. Some purposely [and wickedly perhaps?] and many otherssub-consciously adopted an attitude that emphasized their differencesfrom the rest of the population. (Pentzopoulos, 1962, p. 202)

Furthermore, Pentzopoulos argues that the refugees did not assimilate to themainstream native culture, because of their 'refugee consciousness', meaningtheir desire to return to their previous lives and settlements as reflected in theiridiosyncrasy. In one word, their 'Turkishness'.

Why would the refugees want to dispose of their identity and their AsiaMinor heritage, anyway? Many refugees, accustomed to the sophisticated,cosmopolitan and vivacious urban life of the Ottoman empire, were disap-pointed with the state of underdevelopment of Greek towns and cities.17 Thevillage of Athens, and even the larger port of Salonica seemed to the newcomers'provincial, disorganized, backward and poor' in comparison with the livelycities of Smyrna and Constantinople. The local culture seemed unrefined as well,and they began to develop negative opinions about native Greeks. The localswere perceived as "narrow-minded, ignorant, and uncouth" (Hirschon, 1989,p. 12).

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Moreover, the refugees did not share Greece's yearning to gain acceptance inthe family of modern European nations. Greeks in the Ottoman Empire had notbeen exposed to the comparisons of modern Greek society with its classicalantiquity and the controversy regarding an uninterrupted lineage from Socrateswhich marked the Autochthons' image of their society and its perceived limita-tions. In contrast, for the Asia Minor Greeks there was a more recent andtangible bond with Byzantium, and therefore they considered Constantinople,not Athens, as their capital. They saw themselves as perpetuators of a richcultural tradition handed down to them through their Orthodox Christian faith(Layoun, 1990).

The privileged position of the Phanariots18 within the Ottoman administrationallowed Asia Minor Greeks, independently of their individual social status, toidentify with powerful figures, therefore reinforcing a sense of collective superi-ority. This sense of moral and cultural superiority was transferred to their life ofexile, in spite of, or perhaps as a way to endure their marginal position in theGreek state.

In an apparent perfect symmetry with the exiles' contempt for the nativeGreeks, there was a clearly hostile attitude on the part of the Autochthonstowards the Heterochthons. In all cases, this animosity stemmed from the per-ceived 'oriental' identity of the refugees. A particularly brutal appellationinvented for the refugees was that of 'Turkseed' or 'Turksperm' (Turkospermata)implying that they were in an ethnic sense not pure Greeks, but the bastardchildren of the Turks (Salamone, 1987, p. 101).

In a comparison of Autochthon and Heterochthon cultures, Pentzopolous sug-gests that the 'oriental' flavour of refugee life prevented any interaction betweenthe two social groups. His voice in this case seems to embody the locals'perception of Asia Minor Greeks, and appears to place the responsibility of thefailed assimilation on the refugees themselves.

The newcomers reflected their Oriental environment. Their variousGreek dialects, some of them replete with Turkish words and otherscharacterized by "old-fashioned Greek, fragments of Doric", were dif-ferent from the language spoken in Greece. Their languid music, basedon the minor scale and saturated with monotonous, melancholic tunes,may be closer to the ancient Phrygian or Lydian modes but is neverthe-less typical of the harmonious construction classified by the Europeansas Middle Eastern. An autochthonous inhabitant drank retsina, a resinwine, enjoyed a cigarette, sang a serenade or a cantadha; the peasantfrom Anatolia preferred the raki, an ardent alcoholic aperitif, smokedhis narghile, was moved by the air of an amane song. These distinctionswere not only differences of degree but of substance as well, aninheritance of two separate ways of life. They tended to prevent casualand spontaneous social intercourse of the two groups and to prolongtheir segregation. (Pentzopoulos, 1962, pp. 208-209)

However, hostility towards the newcomers was not an arbitrary invention of thelocals. The state played a central role in the degradation of all things Turkishand, by extent, also the exiles' cultural baggage. The feeling of enmity towardsTurkey was the result of continued exposure to political propaganda dissemi-nated through the media, and of an educational system preaching a nationalist

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view of history. Turkey became the living symbol of oppression of the Greeknation, of stagnation and corruption of its superior national identity. Turkey, forthe Greeks, embodied their collective enemy: the 'Other'.

As a result of the prevalent anti-Turkish sentiment, the refugees' culturalexpressions were condemned to remain a subculture. From their onset, urbanrefugee neighbourhoods became the locus of a subculture with strongly definedsocial boundaries. Refugees in Dekaokto have preserved a clearly developedsense of identity, separate from that of local Greek society, and at the time of thisstudy referred to themselves as prosphyges (refugees, or literally fugitives) orMikrasidtes (Asia Minor people). These designations were used not only by theoriginal refugees, but also by their second and even third generations, most ofwhom still lived in the neighbourhood.

In addition to being entrenched at the lowest level of urban society, refugeeswere politically and economically at its margins. Branded by an imposed socialstigma, the newcomers were not successfully absorbed by the Greek economicstructure. This drove the majority of exiles into poverty, destitution, desperation,and occasionally to "immoral or illegal activities—to prostitution, mendicity orpetty thievery" (Pentzopoulos, 1962, p. 211). They were pushed into the under-world and even jail.19

The balance of reciprocal animosity between Autochthons and Heterochthonswas upset by the intervention of the state, making refugees' marginality real inmany more ways than in the imagined opposition of two cultures. In theirself-designation as refugees even 50 years after their arrival in Greece, we canread a dual significance: on one hand as an indication of their perceived senseof superiority as the 'true heirs of Byzantium', and on the other through a senseof real political disaffection, economic deprivation and social marginality.

Recreating Paradise Lost

In the midst of the disintegration of their old lives and finding themselves in aforeign, hostile land, the refugees turned to their memories of an idealized lifein the lost paradise of Asia Minor as a means to reconstruct their fragmentedsocial structures.20 In the following passage, Maurice Halbwachs explains theimportance of a common geography in restoring a sense of community amongan uprooted group of people:

The group not only transforms the space into which it has beeninserted, but also yields and adapts to its physical surroundings. Itbecomes enclosed within the framework it has built. The group's imageof its external milieu and its stable relationships with this environmentbecome paramount in the idea it forms of itself.... Although one maythink otherwise, the reason members of a group remain united, evenafter scattering and finding nothing in their new physical surroundingsto recall the home they have left, is that they think of the old home andits layout.... (Halbwachs, 1980, pp. 130-131)

And, one might add, the refugees needed to re-create the old home in a myriadof ways through their neighbourhood space and life, their domestic architecture,music, dance, shadow theatre, literature, their social and religious rituals. Thisre-creation served as a bridge to restore a severed way of life, providing thevehicle to establish a sense of continuity amidst the chaos of resettlement.

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Among all types of re-creation, the spatial reconstruction of the neighbour-hood played a capital role in the establishment of connections to the new land.This reconstruction was based on neighbourhood life from the mahalles, thedifferent ethnic quarters in the Ottoman Empire. Refugee neighbourhoods,places, streets and landmark buildings were named after neighbourhoods,places, streets and buildings from the Asia Minor homeland in an attempt tore-establish a familiar geography based on common points of reference.

Refugee neighbourhood life in Dekaokto was structured around a series ofsymbolic oppositions, as in the 'open' and 'closed' states described in great detailby Renee Hirschon (1989) in her study of urban refugee social structures inPiraeus. 'Open' is a "positive, inclusive state, denoting a communal mode oforientation, open interaction, sociability, new life, continuity, luck, light, and thedivine realm"; and 'closed' a negative state denoting "exclusive bonds andclosure, isolation, confinement, deprivation" (Hirschon, 1989, p. 12). We findinstances of these symbolic orientations in a variety of verbal metaphors: younggirls were encouraged to 'marry and open a house', and the house was 'closed'when sons died or men were absent. These symbolic modes of orientationextended to the perception of physical space as well. For example, rural Greekvillages were thought of as inward-looking ('closed'), and by contrast AsiaMinor towns were centres of contact, exchange and variety ('open to the world').

In the mornings, the urban neighbourhood of Dekaokto was the locus ofdomestic female social life with housewives busily going on with their dailychores and housework, exchanging titbits of food and coffee in front of theirhouses, hanging out the laundry, or shopping for groceries at the local store.Most of the women in the neighbourhood did not engage in paid work and wereeconomically dependent on the male members of the household. Labour outsidethe house was not actively sought by women, who usually thought of thesetypes of jobs as either auxiliary or temporary. When necessary, and mostly tocontribute to their own dowries, work was preferred at nearby locations. Workand daily social life patterns were chosen very carefully so as not to threaten thehusband's, or to a lesser extent, the father's pride. In any event, a strictdichotomy between male and female spaces and roles, between public domainand home neighbourhood was still a reality for women in Dekaokto. A woman'ssense of place was centred around her private domain of home-as-workplaceand its immediate surroundings.

The morning activities in Dekaokto emphasized the house, which was a'closed' territory in the overall context of social life. Housewives did not as a ruleinvite neighbours or acquaintances to enter, to avoid of uncalled-for criticism oftheir housekeeping practices, since this was a matter of competition. However,while the dwelling itself was closed to outside scrutiny, the house's public faceand the care the housewife lavished on the space in front of it had greatimportance in the neighbourhood's social life.

The neighbourhood 'opened up' to everyone during afternoon gatherings,which usually started after 5 p.m. and continued throughout the evening, evenuntil midnight. Women gathered outside to chat or to sit in groups, crochetingor knitting. They usually sat sideways on to the street, enabling them to interactwith passersby without appearing to be too involved. Children played onside-streets and men set up tables to play backgammon or cards. During thesegatherings, groups were oriented outwards towards the street, and the socialand spatial division between house and outside world was transcended. Social

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life occurred on the street, at the interface between the house and the publicareas: chairs were pulled out onto the street to initiate and support socialinteraction. Thanks to a moderate climate, this outdoor social interaction contin-ued throughout most of the year, and Dekaokto's residents found it frustratingto stay indoors.

Chairs, stools and tables were brought onto the pavement. They helped bridgethe separation between the secluded inner and visible outer areas, and con-tributed to create a sense of place. Hence, the pavement became an extension ofthe home in full public view: the house 'opened up' to the street and itsboundaries stretched outwards. This transitional area in front of the house,neither entirely public nor fully private, but somewhere in between, created a'spatial link promoting neighbourliness' (Denel, 1989; Hirschon, 1989; Thakurde-sai, 1972).

Dekaokto's open social interaction took place in informal spaces: irregular,unpaved in many cases, streets, street corners and pavements. There was noneed for squares, or places as such. The public realm was structured as a fluidsystem of paths and edges rather than a series of neatly laid inter-connectedplaces as in the urban design tradition of Baron Haussman's reconstruction ofParis. Rather, it was shaped in order to 'maximize social contact' (Jesson, 1977;Thakurdesai, 1972).

It is not surprising that the Renaissance concept of square or place eithergrand or small was never fully adopted in this neighbourhood, though the spacefor squares and gathering plazas connected with wide, straight streets wasprovided in accordance with the monumental civic design tradition. Axial roadscutting straight against steep slopes were laid out to celebrate a grand entranceto the neighbourhood, and open central areas perched on the rugged terrainwere reserved in the hope they would be developed in time as the refugeessettled. However, despite efforts to impose a rational geometric grid onDekaokto's rugged terrain, these grandiose plans never materialized. Instead,the neighbourhood space evolved following closely the Ottoman model of themeydan, or open space, with the street as its locus of social interaction.

The Ottoman meydan was usually very irregular and 'untidy' since, wheneverprovided, it was either meant as an encampment for caravans or as a sportsfield, rather than as a stage for social interaction or for the display of centralizedpower (Goodwin, 1987, p. 452). The bulk of social and neighbourhood life tookplace on the irregular street pattern of the mahalles. This irregular pattern goingback to Byzantine days was perpetuated by Islamic law during Ottoman timeswhen the mahalles followed an organic development around religious cores(mosques, churches and synagogues). Islamic law placed private property rightsabove public property rights, allowing encroachments upon the public way solong as they did not interfere with the rights of others (Celik, 1986).

The Male Realm: From Teke to Kafenio

The gendered dichotomy of the public and the private realms through theseparation of men and women by activities and locale was a strong orderingprinciple in Dekaokto's social milieu. While the neighbourhood public spacewelcomed all ages and genders during its 'open' state in the afternoon, the malerealm tended to operate in an exclusionary fashion. Male social life usually

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centred on the coffee house (kafenio), beyond the house and the neighbourhood,and consequently beyond the reach of the female realm. Kafenia were thepresent-day legacy of hashish-smoking dens or tekes of the beginning of thecentury, where manges—or rembetes—gathered to listen to rembetika, the music ofthe underworld. The mangas, a potent image of masculinity, emerged out of therefugee experience as a challenge to middle-class respectability.21

Refugees, living on the edge of Greek society, and segregated by language andcustoms from the bulk of the Greek population, were attracted to the tekts, towhich they were accustomed in Turkey. Women did not venture into thisexclusively male realm, unless they were the women of the manges, or rembetikasingers themselves (women would not play musical instruments other than thetambourine)—out of fear of being labelled 'loose women'. In a teki one couldfind: "men with fine moustaches ... sitting on rush-bottomed chairs, playingwith their amber worry-beads and talking of the difficulty of finding a job, or oftheir lost houses and lands in Turkey" (Hoist, 1975, p. 19).

It is for you I weep, oh mother dear,And suffer in this land as one exiled.I beg you mother, never shed a tear,But light a candle for your child.22

Rembetika music was fuelled mainly by nostalgia, as in the lyrics from 'TheExile's Grief above. Zeibekiko, a controlled, intense and introspective male solodance was its quintessential dance.23 Greek music, lyrics and dance are createdin close interrelation, as important themes in sociality. Rembetika music, its lyricsand its dance express the rembeti's alienation from and contempt for themiddle-class ethos (Bottomley, 1992; Cowan, 1990; Monos, 1987).

Tekes have been long extinct. During the 1936-41 Metaxas dictatorship, prohib-ition and ruthless persecution forced most of the tekes to close.24 Gradually, thekafenio became the stage for male interaction around a cup of Turkish coffee,political debate, competitive talk, singing, storytelling, and card games replacinghashish smoking and zeibekiko. Rembetika, in the meantime, has been adapted toa growing taste for 'western-style' harmony and large ensembles, abandoningold modal types or roads.25

Recreation of the Domestic Realm: The Sahnisin

Ever since their arrival, residents of Dekaokto have been modifying their housesin search of a sense of 'openness' as well as increased functional space. Initially,overcrowding was the main driving force behind these changes. Many familieswere assigned to live in one unit, one family of as many as eight to 10 peopleper room, sharing the kitchen and sanitary facilities. The situation remainedpractically unchanged for over 20 years until the mid-1950s when a number ofrefugee families were given land in the suburb of Kalamitsa (Romanes & Brott,1989, p. 18).

As in most of Greece, the dowry system added to the need for space inDekaokto, placing social pressure on the parents to provide independent livingquarters for their marrying daughters.26 Usually, the only means to accomplishthis was by subdividing and expanding the family house, which in manyinstances was the family's most valuable asset. The inflated value of thedwellings has its roots in the endemic housing shortages and soaring land

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Regional Typlogy

Projecting Uro^loty Wjtaws

Changes In Dekaokfo

Added Two-su , , . :

Figure 9. Changes and the sahnisin: projecting volumes.

values in major urban centres all over Greece ever since the population exchangeof 1923. Until the mid-1970s land speculation and the construction sector,especially housing, have been the main force for urban growth in Greece.27 Thistendency towards investing in houses and land also reflected a perceived lack oflong-term social security among the working classes (Hastaoglou et al., 1987,p. 174).

Population density and the dowry system placed tremendous pressure on theresidents to expand their original units, further entangling the already complexland ownership patterns in the neighbourhood. Rooms sprouted on secondstoreys throughout Dekaokto, and sheds encroached onto the street and thebackyards in the interior of the blocks, in order to satisfy the need to expand theinterior space of the homes (Figure 9).

However, an aspect of these changes was left unexplained by a mere func-tional need: a sense of individual and collective identity that the originalstate-built houses were incapable of fulfilling:

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Changes In Dekaokto

Figure 10. Changes and one sahnisin: new structures.

The experience of the years immediately following the Asia Minordebacle had demonstrated that some newcomers had been dissatisfiedwith their state-erected dwellings; their stereotyped and plain architec-ture had insulted the exiles' sense of individualism and beauty. (Pent-zopoulos, 1962, p. 228)

Residents adapted their individual houses for motives that go beyond apractical search for space. In the choice of forms, locations, proportions andmaterials, Dekaokto's houses were brought closer step by step to the regionaltypology of the sahnisin, or corbelled architecture. The sahnisin uses mostlywooden or stone bracket supports (Figure 9) that allow upper rooms to take afunctional rectangular shape and also to increase the floor area to a maximumin often irregular urban sites. The room itself was often extended over the streetor garden on consoles or corbels, and sometimes columns. As a result, streetswould be lined with upper rooms jutting out under wide eaves to create shade,and rows of windows projecting as if "hungry for the view and for fresh air"(Berry, 1938; Goodwin, 1976).

In Dekaokto the sahnisin was re-created using readily available materials such

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Regional Typology

—'- -'• -:";:"iii; imfiifi fi if'It 'rrm MMjr^u^ f&ws^y i^k^W'

Changes in DekaoktoHI

Figure 11. Changes and the sahnisin: fenestration.

as glass, cement and metal, instead of exclusively traditional wooden structures(Figures 9,10,11). The inherent limitations and characteristics of these materialsand their respective construction systems resulted in creative adaptations of thetraditional typology: concrete pilotis that go to the floor rather than corbels, largeglass enclosures rather than wood screens—or musharrabiehs—towers of cementrather than stone (Figure 10). In addition to the optimization of floor space, theseprojecting rooms offered many other amenities to the women who spent most oftheir time in them: they provided a sense of openness that the original housesdenied, they helped to better capture the abundant Mediterranean sunlight, and,most important, they enabled the housewives to monitor the life of the streetbelow. In sum, they were the 'open eyes' of the house and its link with the worldof the neighbourhood; the public extension of a very private home.

Different sources attribute the origins, and therefore the 'creative ownership'of the domestic building typology of the sahnisin to different nations, such asGreece, Turkey, Bulgaria or the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, according to the

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personal affiliations of the author (Arbaliev, 1982; Chipan, 1983; Denel, 1989;Megas, 1951; Motsoupolous, 1988; Patterson, 1972). This suggests that thetypology itself transcends arbitrary national territorial boundaries, and thereforeits application still carries meaning to a variety of builders and users whoperpetuate it across borders.

It is unlikely, nevertheless, that the prototype of the sahnisin lies with theorigins of the Ottoman Empire, since private property and the sense of a homewere not particularly pursued by the Ottomans or the nomadic Selguks beforethem. The real home of the sultan and his vezirs was a tent (Goodwin, 1976,p. 429).

It is more likely, though, that the sahnisin developed to its height duringByzantine times and was then adopted and adapted via the Ottoman konak, anurban multi-storeyed house. The typical Byzantine house was two or threestoreys in height with the upper storeys always projecting farther than theground floor and supported by wooden corbels or brackets. These projectionsalso resulted in an extensive use of bay windows—a feature that was widelyrepeated later in houses of the Ottoman period. In the stone houses of thePhanar, the usual curved wooden bracketed support took the form of a stonecorbel cut in curves (Berry, 1938, p. 280).

The core of the house was a large hall onto which all other rooms opened. Thisplan, based on Roman and Ancient Greek types, was adapted effortlessly via thecentral hall or sofa to the functional requirements of the Ottoman household(Celik, 1986, p. 21). The sofa would in many cases have a high, exposed roof asceiling, reminiscent of once being an outdoor space in between tents (Denel,1989).

Most of the houses were built by groups of travelling builders (bouloukia orisnafs). The members of these mason's guilds came from mountainous andusually poor areas such as western Macedonia, northern Epirus, Langadia andKarpathos. Highly mobile, these craftsmen became familiar with the architectureof the different regions of the empire. They were in charge of continuing anddisseminating a collective building tradition throughout the Ottoman Empire.Hence, the typology of the sahnisin and its construction methods are foundthroughout the Balkans and Greece just as much as in Anatolia (Bouras, 1983;Goodwin, 1976; Moutsopoulos, 1988).

The millenary existence of the sahnisin was abruptly interrupted after indepen-dence and the installation of the first Greek kingdom. Urban legislation imposedby the Bavarian rule of King Otto I prohibited the creation of these regionalarchitectural forms. This law was soon followed by town planning legislationthat precluded cantilevered and other regional architectural forms and activelyfavoured the language of neoclassicism (Moutsopoulos, 1988).

More recently, refugee neighbourhoods such as Dekaokto have faced newforces in their search for a regional identity. After the fall of neoclassic architec-ture, it was soon replaced with the other great universalist tradition of theInternational Style, which, coupled with the construction boom of the 1960s and1970s, extended one more layer of sameness throughout urban Greece. Theprinciples of the modern movement were made official through the GeneralBuilding Code in the 1980s. The maximum use of every inch of the site has beenthe main generative force behind the thousands of apartment blocks thatreplaced the old, lower density building stock in Greek cities, Kavala notexcepted (Hastaoglou et ah, 1987, p. 173).

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Change and Adaptation as a Matter of Survival

The search for communal identity through the domestic and neighbourhoodspace took place in Dekaokto largely without intervention from the 'tech-nocrats'—planners, architects and engineers—and in most cases in spite of theirintervention. As a legacy from Ottoman and more recent military junta times,representatives of the state government were deeply distrusted throughoutGreece (Hirschon, 1989; Romanos & Brott, 1989; Salamone, 1987). Communitiestended to be fiercely self-reliant, banking mostly on their own collective andindividual resources.

The historical reasons for this widespread mistrust of centralized governmentamong the refugees are clearly exposed by Pentzopoulos in the followingpassage:

The rather tolerant authority of the Ottoman Empire and the autonomygranted to the various heterogeneous elements had given the oppor-tunity to the subjected races to develop an almost independent way oflife. The unredeemed Hellenes, proud of their culture, cognizant oftheir nationality, devoted to their customs and traditions, were orga-nized into close, compact groups. They elected their chiefs among therespected elders, they worshipped in churches they had built, theywere educated in schools they financed. The Greek community was thesocial framework within which every activity took place. One couldalmost characterize the system as one of local government or ofself-administration. To these persons, the highly centralized state, theomnipotent bureaucracy of the capital which controlled every aspect oflife ... was a foreign concept which their idiosyncrasy instinctivelyrejected. (Pentzopoulos, 1962, p. 175)

This same centralized power the refugees so distrust(ed) attempted to impose away of life concordant with its own view of a Greek national image—an imagethat in most cases ran counter to the self-image created and re-created by theuprooted population.

Local government attempts to plan the development of neighbourhoodsfrequently conflicted with internal community dynamics. For instance, if thebuilding to plot area ratios and the set-back lines established for Dekaokto in theMaster Plan for Kavala28 were to be followed to the letter, it would result in thedemolition of most of the structures in the neighbourhood and their likelyreplacement with four- to five-storey apartment buildings. However, owing tothe ownership, dowry and subdivision pressures described earlier, the neigh-bourhood's houses resisted demolition for nearly 70 years. This phenomenon isby no means permanent, as some new houses, or more typically half-newapartment buildings, emerged in scattered locations throughout Dekaokto (Fig-ure 10).

Dekaokto changed gradually, in a process of accumulation throughout theyears from generation to generation. The neighbourhood houses have beenadded to, rather than subtracted from, through a process of creative adaptation

' to fit the needs of the families and the community. Change in the domestic spaceof Dekaokto was a manifestation of a search for identity, an identity rooted faraway in time and space. Change emerged from the need for a balance between

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"continuity and breaks in continuity, between tradition and transformation"(Lifton, 1995, p. 66).

The alienation of the planning profession in Greece is an unfortunate exampleof the potential results of political myopia. The planning and building profes-sions must learn to understand the social and cultural forces taking place inneighbourhoods such as Dekaokto, in order to guide development effectively.Without this understanding, policymakers in Greece and elsewhere are doomedto impose alien solutions on often ill-defined community problems. At the locallevel, authorities should find a way to hear the voice of the communities and theindividuals they serve. By leaving enough room for change and flexibility in theotherwise heavily bureaucratic machinery of the state, city government agencieswould be more successful in meeting the needs of their communities.

Experiences such as those faced by Dekaokto's refugees will continue occur-ring while groups of people are driven from their homeland because of theirreligious convictions, their ethnicity, or any other pretext used to uproot entirepopulations. Not far from this region, the former Yugoslav Republics arepainfully emerging from a tragic debacle that smacks heavily of the events of the1920s. In this light, the Greco-Turkish agreement acquires a new relevance.These events, rooted in state-provoked manipulation of religious and ethnichatred to the service of nationalist claims, can only engender widespreaddestruction. At the individual level the authorities wrought the destruction ofcenturies-old homes and communities and sought to transform them accordingto the inflexible logic of nationalism.

In the end, millenary ways of life in Dekaokto proved to be more resilient thanthe national programme. Quietly but persistently, refugees created a frameworkto reinvent a communal identity which has now, two generations later, found anew life in its appropriation by the young Greek middle class and intellectualélite.

Notes

1. I refer here to E. Gellner's definition of high cultures as "standardized, literacy- and education-based systems of communication". Hence, nationality becomes definable in terms of a sharedhigh culture (Gellner, 1983, pp. 54-55).

2. Other expressions of this resistance can be found in refugee music, dance, shadow theatre andliterature (Couroucli, 1993; Holst, 1975; Layoun, 1990; Monos, 1987).

3. We find, for instance, attempts to bring the 'low culture' of rembetika, the music of the refugeesfrom Asia Minor, into the cultural mainstream towards the end of the Papadopoulos dictator-ship (Holst, 1975, p. 16; Couroucli, 1993, p. 112). A renewed enthusiasm for traditional andregional flavours is also found in the special scholarly attention that the different vernacularGreek architectures receive today, eventually being also drafted into the service of nationalisticaims. For a historical account of the study of Greek vernacular architecture, refer to Philippides(1983, pp. 33-49), who examines the work of twentieth-century scholars on regional buildingforms and its relation to the quest for a contemporary Greek national architecture. ProfessorPhilippides presents the classic work Ε Elliniki Oika, by Georgios Megas (1951) which proposednot only that the Greek people descended directly from the ancients, but their architecture wasbased on the same principles.

4. While Greece was engaged in reconstructing its capital and other urban centres to fit animported idea of order and symmetry, it was not a unique process. Istanbul and Cairo, forinstance, underwent the very same reconstruction with similar goals (Bastéa, 1994; Çelik, 1992;Mitchell, 1988).

5. As a variant of this experimental policy towards ethnic minorities, and in an attempt to convertthe Ottoman Empire into a Turkish national state, the Young Turks aimed for the systematicextermination of the Armenian people. This resulted in the murder of anywhere between

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800000 and 1.3 million people in 1915. This would eventually be termed 'genocide', and laterstill 'ethnic cleansing', becoming a model to deal with the so-called 'ethnic minority problem'.

6. Macedonia has often been a major source of conflict and instability in the Balkans. Even todayit lies at the centre of a bitter dispute between Greece and the former Yugoslav Republic overwhich group has the right to identify itself as Macedonians (Danforth, 1993, p. 3).

7. The Imaret, a monastery and soup kitchen for 300 softas (theological students of Islam), wasfounded by Mehmet Ali (http://kavala.forthnet.gr, 16 June 1997).

8. One of the earliest precedents of this apartment building typology was designed in Athens(Semitelou Street) by N. Valsamakis (Doumanis, 1984, p. 20).

9. Wealthy young Greeks studied in the universities of Western Europe, and those of Germanyand France in particular. They came into contact with the ideas of the Enlightenment, theFrench Revolution, romantic nationalism, and even more important, they were made aware ofEurope's infatuation with Ancient Greek civilization and language (Clogg, 1992, p. 27). This isparticularly significant, since, according to Benedict Anderson, "communities are to be dis-tinguished not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style [emphasis added] in which they areimagined" (1983, p. 15).

10. In a world conveniently classified by Orientalism, where "the difference between the familiar(Europe, the West, 'us'), and the strange (the Orient, the East, 'them')" was stressed andpromoted (Said, 1978, p. 43).

11. A similar contest in the quest for identity had been developing in other forms of representation,such as music and shadow theatre. In music, for instance, it took the form of a return to 'thescience of harmony' in music with nationalist lyrics which had long been "stunted by mixingtheir songs with the primitive chants of the Turks" [emphasis added] (Chaconas, 1942, p. 72). Inthe same vein, rembetika, the music of the refugees from Asia Minor, was confined to themargins of society--to the tekés, or hashish dens--since its appearance on the mainland, andwas even outlawed during the Metaxas dictatorship [1936-41] (Holst, 1975, p. 16). Shadowtheatre and its main character, Karagiozis, were despised by the urban middle classes and manynationalists who considered that 'Turkish' elements were not part of the national culture(Couroucli, 1993, p. 100).

12. "A growing international competitiveness was reflected in the large-scale rebuilding of capitalcities, as the great powers bolstered their self-esteem in the most visible, ostentatious manner.In Rome, the Master Plan of 1883 sought to create a capital city worthy of a new nation, withgrand avenues and boulevards on the Parisian model. In Vienna, the grand buildings facing theRingstrasse were specifically intended to reflect 'the greatness of Empire'. In Berlin, Germanunification was expressed visually in 'magnificent spacious streets, tree-planted squares, monu-ments and decorations', including the Column of Victory, the Reichstag, the Siegesalle and theCathedral, all buildings conceived in a spirit of chauvinistic ostentation, 'the silent sentinels ofnational glory'. In Paris, the Eiffel Tower, constructed for the Exhibition of 1889, was designedto 'frapper le monde', to stand as 'a triumphal arch as striking as those which earlier generationshave raised to honour conquerors'. And in Washington too, the Park commission, whichrecommended the completion and extension of L'Enfant's original grand plan, was in partmotivated by similar aims" (Hobsbawm Ranger, 1983, p. 127).

13. The Heterochthons were the Greeks from the areas outside the initial confines of the kingdom;the Autochthons were the 'natives', from the heartland of the struggle for independence (Clogg,1992, p. 48).

14. 'Ionia' in a literal sense refers to the Greek civilization along the Asia Minor Aegean coastlineof present-day Turkey where Hellenic colonization goes back to the eleventh century BC. Thisdesignation alone, however, does not indicate uninterrupted historical ties with the pre-SocraticHellenic culture through Byzantine times (Salamone, 1987, p. 37).

15. It was common to find refugees who spoke only Turkish upon their arrival in Greece (Eddy,1931, p. 205).

16. Ionians, for example, epitomized by Smyrnaians, were perceived as "gregarious and fun-loving,with progressive ideas". On the other hand, they were also characterized as "frivolous, noisy,turbulent, quarrelsome, and prone to gossip, with loose moral standards (the women inparticular)". People from Inner Anatolia were generally considered to be "serious and peace-loving" but they were also said to be "slow-witted, plodding, and uncouth". Pontics, inparticular, had a distinctive image as "loving, devoted to their families, hard-working andproud"; in music, song, and dance, they were regarded as "conservative", and even "innatelystubborn". They spoke an archaic language, and were mockingly called Aoútides from theirpronunciation of the demonstrative pronoun aytos (this one) as a-oútos', instead of the more

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common aftós'. People from Constantinople were regarded as the "aristocrats" among therefugees, independently of their actual social status in the community; but at the same time,they were stigmatized as being "conceited" and "stuck up" (Hirschon, 1989, p. 24).

17. The Greek merchant middle class emerged during the last years of the Ottoman Empire. Theylived and conducted their business in the larger Aegean port cities of the Empire (Denel, 1989;Karpat, 1973; Yannoulopoulos, 1981).

18. The Phanariots were a small but influential group of Greeks who occupied positions of powerin the highest reaches of the Ottoman state. They are named after the Phanar, or Lighthousequarter of Constantinople where the Ecumenical Patriarchate was situated (Clogg, 1992, p. 21).

19. The refugees' borderline status, however, requires further clarification, since the underworldduring the period from the end of the nineteenth century to the Second World War was a muchmore ambiguous phenomenon than it is today. In a corrupt and repressive society, wherebribery was the norm, to be against the law was often simply a natural consequence of urbanpoverty. For a wider discussion on the social, political, economic and cultural state ofmarginality among refugees see Couroucli (1993), Cowan (1990), Hirschon & Gold (1982), Holst(1975), Monos (1987) and Pentzopoulos (1962).

20. "The best way to describe the sentiments of the exchanged Greeks towards Anatolia is to saythat they view that region as 'Paradise Lost'. Even those who have attained a higher positionin Greece than the one they had in their old surroundings, recall their place of origin with afeeling of lingering homesickness" (Pentzopoulos, 1962, p. 205).

21. The refugees created through the fusion of the Anatolian musical traditions and those of themainland a unique new type of music called rembetika. The word rembet, or rebet, is derivedfrom a Turkish word meaning outlaw or outsider. Rembetika music was originally the provinceof the 'Other', the refugee. Ironically, it has become the centre of a revivalist phenomenonattracting the interest of middle-class Greek youth: "The words of songs which had beenbanned for years [during the dictatorships] reminded young Greeks that the rembetes weredrop-outs, anti-authoritarian, and even better, they smoked marihuana" (Holst, 1975, p. 16; seealso Cowan, 1990 and Monos, 1987).

22. Taken from the label: Greek-Oriental Rebetica, Songs and Dances in the Asia Minor Style--TheGolden Years: 1911-1937, CD Folklyric, 1991, p. 3.

23. Even today, when zeibekiko is danced, the vast majority of celebrants--and virtually allwomen--are prevented from dancing.

24. Even though the prewar prohibition was ostensibly directed against hashish smoking, rembetikamusicians were usually given harsher sentences than other offenders. The lyrics of the rembetikasongs were far more irritating to the repressive puritanism of Metaxas and his police force(Holst, 1975, p. 76).

25. Rembetika songs were initially based not on scales in the western sense of the word, but onmodal types which can be written out in the form of a scale but which have characteristicphrases and patterns of movement. Certain notes are more important than others, certainrelations between notes are stressed. In classical Arabic music, there were hundreds of thesemodes or makams and each was felt to have a special character suited to a particular emotion,mood or time of the day. Just as a classical Indian musician has a large number of modal typesat his disposal from which he can chose a rag and build a complicated pattern of improvisation,so the Arab or Turkish musician has a repository of makams. Having chosen one, he can thenexplore its possibilities in a taxim, or semi-improvised piece. Early rembetika musicians still usedthe work makam for the modal types but they soon became known by the Greek wordthromi--literally roads. The word taxim is still used to refer to the improvised introductions torembetika songs (Holst, 1975, pp. 65-66).

26. A dowry is usually provided in the form of the daughter's share of familial inheritance. Inurban settings a house, or more exactly, separate living quarters are the bride's familycontribution. Thus, the house is the ultimate female realm (Hirschon, 1982; Salamone, 1987).

27. In 1971 Greece had a world record in building new houses (17.7 per 1000 people) followed bySweden (13.7), Japan (11.9), and Denmark (10.01) (Hastaoglou et al., 1987, p. 161).

28. The Master Plan of Kavala, commissioned by the Ministry of Planning, Housing and theEnvironment, was prepared by Thumios Papayiannis and Associates between 1982 and 1984.

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