Strangers and Gifts: Hostility and Hospitality in Rural Greece. Journal of Mediterranean Studies 1: 37-53. (original) (raw)
In rural Greece, 'strange' or 'stranger' are term s which can be applied , depending on context, to anyone outside the house and family. This 'us'/ 'stranger' divide is broadly reflected in gift exchange, which is greatest between those who are closely related, converting gradually to 'hostility' as the ties of blood and m utual interest weaken and disappear. However this pattern is reversed again as the element of competition with strangers dies out, and this reversal is typified in the hospitality shown to the 'complete' stranger who is totally outside the norm al village economy. This phenom enon is explained with reference to motives for gift-giving which involve spiritual values. Although these values are discernible in some gift-giving in village life, economic pressures on the whole subordinate them to those of self-interest, and this is perceived as an aspect of m an's fall from paradise. However, because the villagers simultaneously perceive their house and family to be rooted in the spiritual world, they are also under a strong necessity to live out, even in a straitened economic environment, the values of unconditional giving which are typical of this other world. The 'complete' stranger is the only person to whom such giving can be offered w ithout fatally undermining the material basis of the house, and thus is the only outsider to whom the family can manifest what it feels to be its real identity.
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