By the summer of 1974, the island of Cyprus was home to two separate refugee communities. Charting the displaced cultures of the Greek Cypriot community in the south, and that of the Turkish communities in the north, Lisa Dikomitis provides a moving and detailed qualitative ethnography of the refugee experience in Cyprus. In her groundbreaking study, made possible by the opening of the north/south border during fieldwork, Dikomitis demonstrates how both ethnic groups are linked by their histories of displacement to a single 'place of desire', a small mountainous village located in the north of the island. By identifying the specific social and cultural meanings that the notions of home, identity, justice and suffering have come to have for both populations, Cyprus and its Places of Desire will appeal to scholars and students of Cypriot, Turkish and Greek history as well as those with an interest in the fields of anthropology, sociology and identity.

By and large, architectural historians use texts, drawings, and photographs to craft their narratives. Oral testimony from those who actually occupy or construct buildings is rarely taken as seriously. Speaking of Buildings offers a rebuttal, theorizing the radical potential of a methodology that has historically been cast as unreliable. Essays by an international group of scholars look at varied topics, from the role of gossip in undermining masculine narratives in architecture to workers' accounts of building with cement in midcentury London to a sound art piece created by oral testimonies from Los Angeles public housing residents. In sum, the authors call for a renewed form of listening to enrich our understanding of what buildings are, what they do, and what they mean to people.

This edited volume of interdisciplinary essays considers the aspects of nation, identity, and collective experience in the notoriously divided island of Cyprus. The contributors examine the role of international politics particularly the involvement of Greece and Turkey and examine the changing relationship between the Greek and Turkish Cypriot communities since 1955. The book challenges prevailing assumptions about political and cultural identity in Cyprus and theorizes on the prospects for mobilizing more multi-dimensional and workable formations of community on Cyprus. The result is a tightly conceived volume, divided into sections of national identity, political possibilities, the location of culture, and social and psychological perspectives.

This book reflects the way in which the city interacts with the sacred in all its many guises, with religion and the human search for meaning in life. As the process of urbanization of society is accelerating thus giving an increasing importance to cities and the 'metropolis', it is relevant to investigate the social or cultural cohesion that these urban agglomerations manifest. Religion is keenly observed as witnessing a growth, crucially impacting cultural and political dynamics, as well as determining the emergence of new sacred symbols and their inscription in urban spaces worldwide. The sacred has become an important category of a new interpretation of social and cultural transformation processes. From a unique broader perspective, the volume focuses on the relationship between the city and the sacred. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, combining the expertise of philosophers, historians, architects, social geographers, sociologists and anthropologists, it draws a nuanced picture of the different layers of religion, of the sacred and its diverse forms within the city, with examples from Europe, South America and the Caribbean, and Africa.

The British faced two serious problems the first, the Greek Cypriots desire for Enosis and second, the intense rivalry and antipathy between the Greek and Turkish communities.In 1955 the former resulted in a bitter EOKA terrorist campaign led by Colonel George Grivas. This resulted in the deaths of over 100 British servicemen. Nicosias Murder Mile was the scene of many shootings. The Governor Field Marshal Harding narrowly escaped assassination in his residence. The next phase was the Turkish Governments military intervention in 1974 to prevent what they saw as the Greek takeover. In a bloody invasion which saw widespread ethnic cleansing and displacement of communities, the Island was divided into two sectors policed by the United Nations. This exists today, as do the British Sovereign Base areas at Dhekalia and Atrokiri/Episkopi.This book describes the most troubled years of this beautiful island which is so well known to British servicemen, their families and vacationers.

This collection brings together an interdisciplinary pool of scholars to explore the relationship between children and borders with richly-documented ethnographic studies from around the world. The book provides a penetrating account of how borders affect children's lives and how children play a constitutive role in the social life of borders.

A cultural history of the goddess of love, from a New York Times bestselling and award-winning historian. Aphrodite was said to have been born from the sea, rising out of a froth of white foam. But long before the Ancient Greeks conceived of this voluptuous blonde, she existed as an early spirit of fertility on the shores of Cyprus -- and thousands of years before that, as a ferocious warrior-goddess in the Middle East. Proving that this fabled figure is so much more than an avatar of commercialized romance, historian Bettany Hughes reveals the remarkable lifestory of one of antiquity's most potent myths. Venus and Aphrodite brings together ancient art, mythology, and archaeological revelations to tell the story of human desire. From Mesopotamia to modern-day London, from Botticelli to Beyoncé, Hughes explains why this immortal goddess continues to entrance us today -- and how we trivialize her power at our peril.

Examines the effects of culturally specific interpretations of refugeehood with an ethnographic focus on Cyprus. Being a “refugee” is not simply a matter of law, determination procedures, or the act of flight. It is an ontological condition, structured by the politics of law, affect, and territory. Refugeehood and the Postconflict Subject explores the variable facets of refugeehood, their interconnections, and their intended and unintended consequences. Grounded on more than a decade of research on the island of Cyprus, Olga Maya Demetriou considers how different groups of “refugees” coexist and how this coexistence invites reinterpretations of the law and its politics. The long-standing political conflict in Cyprus produced not only the paradigmatic, formally recognized “refugee” but also other groups of displaced persons not so categorized. By examining the people and circumstances, Demetriou reveals the tensions and contestations within international refugee regimes and argues that any reinterpretation that accounts for these tensions also needs to recognize that these “minor” losses are not incidental to refugeehood but an intrinsic part of the wider issues. “This book offers a number of important insights with respect to refugees and refugeehood. Through the notion of ‘minor’ losses, rather than the conventional focus on ‘big’ losses, the author argues that refugees do not move from conflict to safety but from one conflict into another, or rather into a complexity of conflicting and conflictual situations and circumstances. The idea that ‘minor’ losses are not incidental to refugeehood but an intrinsic part of the wider issues at play is an important insight.” — Leonie Ansems de Vries, author of Re-Imagining a Politics of Life: From Governance of Order to Politics of Movement

A REESE'S BOOK CLUB PICK Winner of the 2022 BookTube Silver Medal in Fiction * Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Fiction "A wise novel of love and grief, roots and branches, displacement and home, faith and belief. Balm for our bruised times." -David Mitchell, author of Utopia Avenue A rich, magical new novel on belonging and identity, love and trauma, nature and renewal, from the Booker-shortlisted author of 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World. Two teenagers, a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot, meet at a taverna on the island they both call home. In the taverna, hidden beneath garlands of garlic, chili peppers and creeping honeysuckle, Kostas and Defne grow in their forbidden love for each other. A fig tree stretches through a cavity in the roof, and this tree bears witness to their hushed, happy meetings and eventually, to their silent, surreptitious departures. The tree is there when war breaks out, when the capital is reduced to ashes and rubble, and when the teenagers vanish. Decades later, Kostas returns. He is a botanist looking for native species, but really, he's searching for lost love. Years later a Ficus carica grows in the back garden of a house in London where Ada Kazantzakis lives. This tree is her only connection to an island she has never visited--- her only connection to her family's troubled history and her complex identity as she seeks to untangle years of secrets to find her place in the world. A moving, beautifully written, and delicately constructed story of love, division, transcendence, history, and eco-consciousness, The Island of Missing Trees is Elif Shafak's best work yet.

A journey into de facto state-building based on ethnographic and archival research in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus What is de facto about the de facto state? In Sovereignty Suspended, this question guides Rebecca Bryant and Mete Hatay through a journey into de facto state-building, or the process of constructing an entity that looks like a state and acts like a state but that much of the world says does not or should not exist. In international law, the de facto state is one that exists in reality but remains unrecognized by other states. Nevertheless, such entities provide health care and social security, issue identity cards and passports, and interact with international aid donors. De facto states hold elections, conduct censuses, control borders, and enact fiscal policies. Indeed, most maintain representative offices in sovereign states and are able to unofficially communicate with officials. Bryant and Hatay develop the concept of the "aporetic state" to describe such entities, which project stateness and so seem real, even as nonrecognition renders them unrealizable. Sovereignty Suspended is based on more than two decades of ethnographic and archival research in one so-called aporetic state, the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC). It traces the process by which the island's "north" began to emerge as a tangible, separate, if unrecognized space following violent partition in 1974. Like other de facto states, the TRNC looks and acts like a state, appearing real to observers despite international condemnations, denials of its existence, and the belief of large numbers of its citizens that it will never be a "real" state. Bryant and Hatay excavate the contradictions and paradoxes of life in an aporetic state, arguing that it is only by rethinking the concept of the de facto state as a realm of practice that we will be able to understand the longevity of such states and what it means to live in them.