Nikos Bozatzis | University of Ioannina/Greece (original) (raw)

Books by Nikos Bozatzis

Accounts from a range of disciplines across the social sciences have described an essential ambiv... more Accounts from a range of disciplines across the social sciences have described an essential ambivalence in modern Greek national identity. Modern Greek national identity is shown to encompass an ideological tension between oriental and occidental cultural stereotypes. Critical ethnographers have described the ways in which this symbolic ambivalence is casually reproduced within everyday discourse in Greece. Recent developments in critical social psychology also draw attention to the ideological dilemmas manifested within lay argumentative practices. Moreover, the discursive turn within social psychology offers a range of analytic concepts and tools for disentangling the identity work accomplished within talk in interaction. Drawing upon evidence from ethnographic analyses, the present research offers a social psychological account of the rhetorical reiteration of the ideological ambivalence of modern Greek national identity within talk. To that end, two empirical studies were conducted. The first involved Greek students in Lancaster University and the second Greek employees in the European Commission in Brussels. In both studies, the research participants were asked to account for their living experiences in their adopted countries of residence. Their accounts were audio recorded and excerpts of their talk discourse analysed. The analyses highlighted the flexible discursive uses of cultural stereotypes of modern Greek national identity. It is shown that the rhetorical deployment of these stereotypes is designed to ward off negative identity inferences about the speakers. In particular, the identity inferences sought to be disavowed are the one of prejudice (as xenophobia) and the one of xenomania. The latter refers to a culturally specific ideological charge within the context of modern Greece, which targets unwarranted pro-Western attitudes. Overall, the analyses conducted highlight the reiteration of the cultural ambivalence of modern Greek national identity within talk and outline the grounds for a convergence of ethnographic arguments about the symbolic uses of stereotypes with social psychological arguments about their interactional uses.

Papers by Nikos Bozatzis

1.2. From the Greek civil war (1945-49) to the rise of the Macedonian question 2. Modern Greek na... more 1.2. From the Greek civil war (1945-49) to the rise of the Macedonian question 2. Modern Greek nationalism and nation building 2.1. The rise of modern Greek nationalism: An Enlightened project 2.2. Greek nation building: The doctrine of national unity 3. Modern Greece: In the margins of the West and East 3.1. Inconsummate Westernisation and the missionary aspect of the Great Idea 3.2. The language question and the ideological construct of Greekness 4. Modern Greece in the looking glass: The politics of ambivalence 4.1. The politics of binary oppositions: The Hellenic ideal vs. the modern Greek 4.2. The cultural ambivalence of modern Greek national identity: The Hellenic / Romeic dilemma 4.3. The Hellenic / Romeic dilemma and the cultural reproduction of Western hegemony 4.4. From symbolic to conversational pragmatics and back again i CHAPTER TWO BANAL NATIONALISM AND THE IDEOLOGICAL DILEMMA OF PREJUDICE 1. Introduction 2. The thesis of Banal Nationalism 2.1. "Hot" and "Banal" nationalism 2.2. The dialectics of forgetting and remembering and the casual flagging of the national homeland 2.3. National identity as a form of life 2.4. Imagining the national "Us", "Them" and the nation in a world of nations 3. Prejudice vs. rationality: An (everyday) dilemma of liberal ideology 3.1. Tracing the semantic transformations of "prejudice" 3.2. Claiming a rational profile: prejudice and tolerance in lay discourse 4. Banal Nationalism and the case of modern Greek nationalism and national identity 4.1. Banal Nationalism and its relevance for a study of modern Greek nationalism and national identity 4.2. National distinctiveness and cultural ambivalence 4.3. Western "us" and non-Western "them": Cultural stereotypes and their uses 4.4. Towards a reconsideration of the dialectic between universalism / internationalism and particularism / nationalism

The Taos Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of social constructio... more The Taos Institute is a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development of social constructionist theory and practice for purposes of world benefit. Constructionist theory and practice locate the source of meaning, value, and action in communicative relations among people. Our major investment is in fostering relational processes that can enhance the welfare of people and the world in which they live. Taos Institute Publications offers contributions to cutting-edge theory and practice in social construction. Our books are designed for scholars, practitioners, students, and the openly curious public. The Focus Book Series provides brief introductions and overviews that illuminate theories, concepts, and useful practices. The Tempo Book Series is especially dedicated to the general public and to practitioners. The Books for Professionals Series provides in-depth works that focus on recent developments in theory and practice. WorldShare Books is an online offering of books in PDF format for free download from our website. Our books are particularly relevant to social scientists and to practitioners concerned with individual, family, organizational, community, and societal change.

Discourse Studies

In this article we illustrate how trainers and trainees negotiate epistemic and deontic authority... more In this article we illustrate how trainers and trainees negotiate epistemic and deontic authority within systemic family therapy training. Adult education principles and postmodern imperatives have challenged trainers’ and trainees’ asymmetries regarding knowledge (epistemics) and power (deontics), normatively implicated by the institutional training setting. Up-to-date, we lack insight into how trainers and trainees negotiate epistemic and deontic rights in naturally occurring dialog within training. Drawing from discursive psychology and conversation analysis, we present an analysis of eight transcribed, videotaped training seminars from a systemic family therapy training program, featuring three trainers and eleven trainees. Our analysis highlights the dilemmatic ways in which participants resist and affirm the normatively implicated trainers’ deontic and epistemic authority. Trainers are shown as mitigating directives and trainees as resisting them, with both displaying (not)kno...

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

Online excessive gaming has been associated with negative player identity constructions depicting... more Online excessive gaming has been associated with negative player identity constructions depicting an abnormal life-style. Up-to-date, there is limited insight into player identity management talk about excessive online gaming. To address this gap, drawing from discursive and rhetorical psychology, we investigated naturally occurring talk of 134 players of World of Warcraft (WoW) -a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG)- from three publicly available websites and of five players from one focus group. The analysis illuminated participants’ dilemmatic and contradictory ways of constructing the player identity, while displaying immersion in the game. Participants invoke identity constructions like ‘nolifer’, ‘hardcore’ or ‘clean’ player, which they disavow or assign to themselves and to each other depending on the conversational context, while attending to concerns about (ab)normalcy. The study’s findings highlight a dynamic process of player identity construction in t...

Journal of Community …

This paper explores the discursive construction of immigrants' criminality in interview acco... more This paper explores the discursive construction of immigrants' criminality in interview accounts obtained by a sample of Greek people in Thessaloniki (Northern Greece). Analysis, which adopts a discursive approach to stereotypes and category construction, indicates that fear and ...

In the wake of Billig’s thesis on banal nationalism, numerous social psychology studies have been... more In the wake of Billig’s thesis on banal nationalism, numerous social psychology studies have been produced documenting on the explicit manifestation or implicit indexicalisation of variants of national identity within text and talk. Within this strand of work, some attention has been paid to ways in which the banal manifestation of national referents may be further interrogated from a critical perspective focusing on Occidentalism. Drawing on this emerging line of research, an analysis is presented here of a travelogue on ‘the Greek crisis’, published in a globally circulating magazine (Vanity Fair). Using tools and concepts from the discursive turn in social psychology, the analysis highlights ways in which Occidentalist assumptions claim rhetorical and ideological legitimacy within a text that advances a ‘culturalist’ explanation of the financial crisis in which Greece has been entangled since 2009. The analysis focuses on ways in which the authorial voice others Greece culturally...

Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, Aug 1, 2006

During the last two decades Greece has become a multicultural society due to the influx of immigr... more During the last two decades Greece has become a multicultural society due to the influx of immigrants mainly from the Balkans and East Europe. At the same time Greece became fully integrated to the European Community. Within this context the relation of Greek national identity to Europe and to the immigrant 'Οther' becomes a topic of everyday conversations and a focal point of social scientific research. This study following a discourse analytic perspective (Edwards, 1997; Edwards and Potter, 1992; Potter, 1996; Potter and Wetherell, 1987) attempts to explore the way Greek people construct Greek national identity in relation to immigration and European integration within an interview context. It is argued that participants strategically managed stereotypes about immigrants in order to avoid accusations of prejudice, while stereotypes about the Europeans seemed to be informed by the ambivalent positioning of Greece between East and West (Bozatzis, 1998; Herzfeld, 1987).

This paper explores the discursive construction of immigrants&#x27; criminality in interv... more This paper explores the discursive construction of immigrants&#x27; criminality in interview accounts obtained by a sample of Greek people in Thessaloniki (Northern Greece). Analysis, which adopts a discursive approach to stereotypes and category construction, indicates that fear and ...

ABSTRACT Drawing upon the notion of occidentalism, developed within cultural theory and critical ... more ABSTRACT Drawing upon the notion of occidentalism, developed within cultural theory and critical ethnography, this article explores ways in which explicit and/or implicit assumptions about the West and Western self are implicated, in their conversational mobilization, to ...

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2011

abstract In the wake of Billig's thesis on banal nationalism, numerous social psychology studies ... more abstract In the wake of Billig's thesis on banal nationalism, numerous social psychology studies have been produced documenting on the explicit manifestation or implicit indexicalisation of variants of national identity within text and talk. Within this strand of work, some attention has been paid to ways in which the banal manifestation of national referents may be further interrogated from a critical perspective focusing on Occidentalism. Drawing on this emerging line of research, an analysis is presented here of a travelogue on 'the Greek crisis', published in a globally circulating magazine (Vanity Fair). Using tools and concepts from the discursive turn in social psychology, the analysis highlights ways in which Occidentalist assumptions claim rhetorical and ideological legitimacy within a text that advances a 'culturalist' explanation of the financial crisis in which Greece has been entangled since 2009. The analysis focuses on ways in which the authorial voice others Greece culturally, while at the same time, manages its own accountability and (reaffirms ms its Occidental credentials.

Condor (Eds.) (2014) Rhetoric, Ideology and Social Psychology: Essays in honour of Michael Billig... more Condor (Eds.) (2014) Rhetoric, Ideology and Social Psychology: Essays in honour of Michael Billig. London: Routledge Banal Occidentalism Nikos Bozatzis With Banal Nationalism (1995), Michael Billig did social sciences a great service: he gave nationalism, arguably the most successful political ideology of modernity, a thoroughly social-psychological frame of reference. Billig's book gave a perspective for theorizing and researching the instantiation and reproduction of national ideology in everyday life. Moreover, by attending to nationalism as a pervasive ideology, Billig advanced a political as well as a social theoretical argument. In his argumentative sights was the recurrent, at the time, habit within western media and academic circles of focussing on the "hot" nationalism of the West's Others and, in so doing, to ignore the nationalism of the West itelf. For Billig, while "normal life" in western nation-States allegedly manifests a zero-degree of nationalism, it rests upon intricate indexicalisations of national imagery and of the core ideological assumption regarding the naturalness of the division of the world in nation-States. In this chapter, drawing on previous work (e.g. Bozatzis 1999; 2005; 2009; Μποζατζής 2005; Μποζατζής, Condor and Levine 2004) as well as inspiration from the thesis of banal nationalism, I am engaging with Billig's thesis in order to give it a further spin. In a Billigian fashion, I shall be arguing that when theorizing turns from the universal focus on the generic national to the particular case of Greek nationalism, nation State and identity, then further universal, critical vistas may emerge into sight.

During the last two decades Greece has become a multicultural society due to the influx of immigr... more During the last two decades Greece has become a multicultural society due to the influx of immigrants mainly from the Balkans and East Europe. At the same time Greece became fully integrated to the European Community. Within this context the relation of Greek national identity to Europe and to the immigrant ‘*ther’ becomes a topic of everyday conversations and a focal point of social scientific research. This study following a discourse analytic perspective (Edwards, 1997; Edwards and Potter, 1992; Potter, 1996; Potter and Wetherell, 1987) attempts to explore the way Greek people construct Greek national identity in relation to immigration and European integration within an interview context. It is argued that participants strategically managed stereotypes about immigrants in order to avoid accusations of prejudice, while stereotypes about the Europeans seemed to be informed by the ambivalent positioning of Greece between East and West (Bozatzis, 1998; Herzfeld, 1987).

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2011

Discourse Studies

Journal of Language and Social Psychology

Journal of Community …

Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture, Aug 1, 2006

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2011

During the last two decades Greece has become a multicultural society due to the influx of immigr... more During the last two decades Greece has become a multicultural society due to the influx of immigrants mainly from the Balkans and East Europe. At the same time Greece became fully integrated to the European Community. Within this context the relation of Greek national identity to Europe and to the immigrant ‘*ther’ becomes a topic of everyday conversations and a focal point of social scientific research. This study following a discourse analytic perspective (Edwards, 1997; Edwards and Potter, 1992; Potter, 1996; Potter and Wetherell, 1987) attempts to explore the way Greek people construct Greek national identity in relation to immigration and European integration within an interview context. It is argued that participants strategically managed stereotypes about immigrants in order to avoid accusations of prejudice, while stereotypes about the Europeans seemed to be informed by the ambivalent positioning of Greece between East and West (Bozatzis, 1998; Herzfeld, 1987).

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2011

Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2013

ABSTRACT Prejudice reduction has been an important concern within social psychology both in theor... more ABSTRACT Prejudice reduction has been an important concern within social psychology both in theory and applied research. According to the premises of Social Identity Theory, redrawing of the category boundaries is often considered a necessary step in order to battle prejudice, because in-group favouritism when the category boundaries change is diffused to the previously distinct identities. The present paper offers a review of the relevant research, and following a discourse analytic perspective argues that recategorisation can also be viewed as a rhetorical resource that people use in verbal interaction in order to achieve certain rhetorical ends. This point is exemplified using interview data from Greece with Greek participants who mobilise common in-groups between themselves and the immigrants in Greece. Different common in-groups were mobilised on the basis of common human nature, common ethnic descent and through the use of the common experience of migration that many Greek people have because Greece has been an emigrant sending country for the biggest part of the 20th century. Occasionally, these category constructions were used to differentiate between immigrants of different ethnic descent claiming that only certain immigrant groups can integrate to Greek society, whereas on other instances, these common in-groups were used in order to inoculate speakers of accusations of prejudice. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Drawing upon the notion of occidentalism, developed within cultural theory and critical ethnograp... more Drawing upon the notion of occidentalism, developed within cultural theory and critical ethnography, this paper explores ways in which explicit and / or implicit assumptions about the West and western self are implicated, in their conversational mobilization, to accountability management. The data analysed come from a study in Western Thrace (Greece), which included interviews and focus group with majority Greek educators about the Muslim minority historically residing in the region. The analysis presented employs tools from critical discursive social psychology. Building upon discourse analytic treatments within social psychology on the mobilization of national categories and accountability management in talk, it is argued that the banal indexicalisation of national categories in talk opens the space for a critical interrogation of the banal indexicalisation of an occidentalist cultural imagery that posits a hierarchical distinction between cultures of the West and the Rest.