The Horns of the Mediterraneanist Dilemma

Michael Herzfeld

American Ethnologist, Vol. 11, No. 3. (Aug., 1984), pp. 439-454.

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 the horns of the Mediterraneanist dilemma

M I C H A E L HERZFELD-Indiana University

a hardening of the categories

In their restless prowling between ethnographic d e t a ~ and

l universal theories of soclety
and culture, anthropologists have often been tempted t o pause at the intermediate level of
analysis represented by some version of the culture area concept. This IS a dangerous pro-
cedure: i t gives the impression that the objective of anthropological analysis is t o general-
ize about the cultural characteristics of particular regions, rather than t o synthesize the
results of a far more intensely locallzed form of ethnography into a globally effective
portrait of humankind. I t thus becomes one of several means whereby anthropology r~sks
a i d ~ n gand a b e t t ~ n gthe perpetuation of cultural stereotypes-an Ironic end product for the
disc~plinewhich, more than any other, has made the rejection of ethnocentrism its central
creed. In noting the paradox that the culture area concept poses, we should n o t hence-
forward ignore i t altogether. I t holds an important lesson for the discipline-a lesson about
the role that its own characteristic discourse plays in the construction of ethnographic
reality. Nowhere can this lesson be more reveal~nglylearned than in the rapid and com-
paratively recent rise of circum-Mediterranean ethnography.
While the Mediterranean zone acquired the status of a dist~nctive cultural e n t ~ t y
relatively late, its study rapidly came t o be regarded as a "discrete . . subspeciality" of the
discipline (Gilmore l982:176; see also 1979:87). Yet even the most committed proponents of
a c o m p a r a t ~ v eMediterranean perspective have admitted t o serlous problems of definition;
their expedient b u t somewhat unsatisfactory denial that the Mediterranean region qualifies
as a true "culture area" attests t o the d i f f ~ c u l t yof pinning down just what i t really IS, other
than a purely geographical entity (Davis 1977.10-13; Boissevain 1979:82-84, Becket

Recent stud~eso f moral a n d symbolic systems have taken for granted the con-
cept o f a "Mediterranean culture area." Consequently, readings of the ethno-
graphic a n d ethnohistorical record have increasingly demonstrated a disturbing
tendency t o circularity, particularly i n stud~eso f the symbolism associated w ~ t h
sexuality a n d envy. This circularity has extended to the uses o f archaeological
evidence: s~milaritiesbetween ancient and modern symbols have virtually been
created i n support of the Mediterraneanist thesis. These generalizations, more-
over, often rely select~velyon materials from only a restricted part o f the circum-
Mediterranean region. As a result, Mediterranean a n d other stereotypes are re-
inforced, whereas they should instead b e critically exam~nedas part o f the sym-
bolic universe inhabited b y informants a n d anthropologists alike. [Med~terra-
nean, Greece, Italy, stereotypes, cultural homogene~ty,symbolism, evil eye,
moral concepts]

Copyr~ght% 1984 by the Amer~canEthnolog~calSoc~ety

0094-0496/84/030439-16$21OII

t h e Mediterraneanist dilemma 439

1979:85). The Braudelian view of its ecological unity does not permit an a priori leap t o
assurnptlons of cultural unity, although the histor~calevidence for intense cultural inter-
mingling cannot be denied. Its characteristic assoc~ationwith the "honor and shame com-
plex" of moral values was developed by a relatively close-knit group of scholars (especially
Peristiany 1965). This may have been at least partially responsible for the curlous geograph-
ical bracketing that resulted-especially the partial exclusion of the Balkans north of
Greece from most collect~onsof ethnographic essays (see Halpern 1980:110), and the near
silence about Israeli Jews and Diaspora Jewish and Gypsy communit~es in the most
substantive essay in Mediterranean anthropology t o appear so far (Davis 1977, especially p.
41; see also Boissevain 1979.81; Griffin 1979:88).
Part of the problem i s revealed by the term "Med~terraneananthropology" (rather than
ethnography). This term implies that the region possesses characteristics that would justify
separate theoretical treatment, rather in the way that symbolic or economic themes have
been isolated for analysis. While even these are necessarily provis~onalarrangements of
data, they d o at least possess the virtue of permitting global comparisons. Culture areas, by
contrast, are by t h e ~ rvery nature parochial, and their elevation t o separate theoretical
status threatens the very goal of comparative analysis at the outset. The issue thus is n o t
whether or not a Mediterranean culture area "exists," but what we might hope to galn or
lose from resorting t o i t for analytical or descriptive purposes. I t IS certainly beyond argu-
ment that Mediterranean lands share a good deal of common history ( D a v ~ s1977:5-6. 255;
Gilmore 1982.178-179. 181). but even this perfectly reasonable proposition can easily be
reduced t o mere solipsism when present-day ethnography is deployed simply t o "prove" it.
This issue is at the core of the discussion that follows.
The problem is as o l d as ethnographic invest~gationin the area. Herodotus, whose
Histories grew o u t of his fascination with "strange cultural contrasts in Mediterranean
lands." nevertheless ended by conflating and equating entities that d i d not necessar~ly
justify such a procedure. W i t h religion, for example, "he assumed that though names might
differ, the gods of one race could be equated w ~ t hthose of another" (Hodgen 1964:21, 25).
The process of cultural translation presumably required some such attempt, and the result
is the first comprehensive survey of circum-Mediterranean culture. Since Herodotus's time,
however, the known world has expanded far beyond the borders of the most generously de-
fined Mediterranean region, with the result that we should no longer expect global general-
izations t o emerge from a purely circum-Mediterranean focus. Indeed, the desire t o
generalize about "Mediterranean culture" has so far had the reverse effect. I t has banished
the societies of the "sea in the middle of the earth" t o the world's political and cultural
periphery.
The tendency t o conceptualize the Mediterranean as a single, more or less homogeneous
e n t ~ t yhas c e r t a ~ n l yr e m a ~ n e dstrong t o this day, not only in anthropological writ~ngsb u t
also, notably, in popular prejudice. Stereotyp~cal images of "Med~terranean peoples"
abound in the English-language literature and superficially seem borne o u t by at least some
of the findings of anthropologists Popular writers credit the region with "voluptuousness"
and "austerity" in a supposedly unique c o m b ~ n a t i o n ,while others of self-consciously
Mediterranean o r i g ~ nhave accepted such characterizations and even quoted them with en-
thusiastic approval (e.g.. Lewis 1978.204). Their observations p a r t ~ a l l y reproduce the
paradoxes reported by ethnographers, the latter including, especially, the s~multaneousat-
tribution t o women of both v ~ r g i n a lpurity and diabolical sexuality The anthropologist's
own culture may be the source of the underlying stereotypes that actually direct the in-
qulry (Fernandez 1983.168). More subtly but no less Insistently than the image of "amoral
familism" (Quigley 1973; see also Banfield 1958), the "honor and shame complex" which
Fernandez rightly excoriates has tended t o legitimize the grab-bag of cultural, genetic, and

440 american ethnologist

psychological traits that latter-day village Tylors and Frazers seem inordinately happy t o
reproduce.
Take the Greek youth who prides himself on a "warm. Mediterranean" romantlc sexual-
ity as well as on the strictness w i t h which he upholds the "traditional" rules of chastity at
home. Easily critlclzed by the forelgn observer for his "double standards," he is, In effect,
replaying the internally confllctlng stereotypes that simultaneously serve his ends and ap-
peal t o the foreign audience, from whom they-along with many other trappings of an
idealized modernity-partly came. As for the Israeli Arab youths who claim that Scandi-
navian tourlst women like "Sephardies [SIC]." meaning themselves (Cohen 1971:226), they
are translating the opposition between "Mediterranean" and "northern" stereotypes Into
the terms of the dominant Jewish community and applying i t t o themselves. This is an ex-
cellent illustration of the way in which stereotypes can index the pattern of domination, at
three distinct levels: north-south. Ashkenazi-Sephardi, Jewish-Arab. The evidence that
these Arab boys play up t o the stereotype as a means of easing anxletles partly generated
by the Indifference t o them of local Jewish girls is a further indication of the role of stereo-
types in the establishment of power hierarchies (see Cohen 1971:226).
Initially, perhaps, the conscientious ethnographer's reaction t o these generalizations 1s
t o demur, t o assume that they came from some newspaper and therefore can legitimately
be ignored, above all t o deny their apparent implication of the Mediterranean peasant's
cultural and even genetic inferlorlty. At most, they may receive a brief fleldnote, rarely if
ever t o resurface in published work; and if they do appear there-this surely being the crux
of Fernandez's observation-they contrive t o d o so In a sophisticated form that removes
them rhetorically, if not essentially, from the stereotypes the ethnographer has taken such
pains t o avoid. I t is, in a word, downright embarrassing t o be told by Greeks (as I was) that
Creeks need a strong government and therefore deserved the junta, or that in (northern or
western) Europe people are more disciplined about things like street litter. Such remarks
are n o t necessarily sycophantic The informant may again be echoing a domlnant ideology
t o which, under the appropriate circumstances and with an appropriate audience, all
members of the community are apt t o subscribe.
In Pefko, a small Rhodian village which certainly d i d not remember the Italian occupa-
tion of the Dodecanese w i t h much affection, I was told that the villagers felt a certain
degree of affinity with the occupiers at the level of what they thought was a common
cultural and "racial" understanding: "mia fatsa, mla ratsa [one face, one race]." they ex-
plalned, in a phrase whose linguistic form might even have enhanced the point (compare
the Italian version: una faccia, una razza').' In short, despite the hostility that undoubtedly
existed, there was a measure of communication that made the dally exigencies of foreign
occupation somewhat more tolerable, and this ability t o interact was "explained" by local
exegetes as an allegedly typical. Mediterranean character profile. I t was also a stereotype
that presented the Italians as inferior in efficiency and sexual self-control t o the Germans,
who seemed more typically "European "
I n Crete I heard it said that the Germans, for all their brutality, were better than the Turks
because they respected the t i m i ("honor, social worth," hence "chastity") of the local
women. Yet men who were o l d enough t o have fought In the 1920-22 Asia Minor cam-
paigns thought that it was acceptable t o have sexual relations with Turkish women, thereby
performing exactly the same offense as that which so offended them when i t was done by
Turks t o their women Here, the recognition that "European" values are superlor t o
"Asiatic" ones operated at t w o dlstinct levels, both in defense of collective Creek self-
regard. O n the one hand, the Germans-as " ~ u r o ~ e a n s " ~ - s h o w ediscipline
d and restraint
In their respect for the "European" traditions of the Greeks, on the other, the Turks-as
"Asiaticsr'-represented a familiar b u t less readily exhibited facet of the Greeks' o w n

the Mediterraneanist dilemma 441

cultural heritage, and could legitimately be treated as they were expected t o treat the
Greeks in turn, although this would never be officially recognized. The "European" and
"Mediterranean" dimensions of the Greek self-stereotype, often mutually contradictory
and both rooted in the development of political discourse inside and outside Greece,
broadly correspond t o an extroverted model for both international consumption and a wry-
ly introspective self-image (Herzfeld 1982a:24-52; 1982b:656)
The Greeks indeed provide an unusually effective demonstration of the relationship be-
tween hegemony and stereotypy: as "Europeans" they have been taught t o adopt a neo-
classical posture that accorded with the liberal philhellenism of the tutelary Great Powers,
while as "typical" Mediterranean folk they have been persuaded t o admit t o all sorts of
flaws in the facade. To appreciate the force of this rhetoric, one need only consider the
irony whereby the Germans were said t o possess a greater sense of t i m i - o f respect for
chastity, that definitive feature of so-called Mediterranean societies-than the Turks.
Northern and western Europeans, with whose recasting of Greek culture in their own image
a conservative political and economic establishment has long complaisantly identified its
own interests (see Sotiropoulos 1977; Mouzelis 1978; Herzfeld 1982a, 1982b), are projected
as the true arbiters of morality and cultural excellence, even though they may be heartily
disliked.
The Greeks' own ambivalence as t o whether they are themselves "European" stems from
the paradox of being cast by the citizens of more powerful states in the conflicting roles of
quintessential source of European culture and undisciplined Mediterranean peasantry.
Their dilemma is the product of a set of attitudes that has also generated the neosurvivalist
strain in Mediterranean studles. This academic tradition Insists that i t is deallng with "an
area of debris of traits and peoples surviving from the wreckage of deceased civilizations"
(Quigley 1973:320). The Greeks' dual self-image is a refraction of this mixture of admiration
for a lost past and pity for today's sad relic I t echoes the kind of stereotypical resuscitation
of "deceased civilizations" that had led Lord Guilford, founder of the Hellenic University
of Corfu, t o preside over his institution in a purple robe imitating that of Socrates (St. Clair
1972:21) A suggestive parallel is furnished by the late World War l l Neopolitan monarch-
ists who wanted t o return the Mezzogiorno t o its agrlcultural roots, wlth field laborers
"housed in barracks, clothed in knee-length homespun tunics in the style of the Roman
peasants of o l d (the Patricians would wear togas), and fed on a low diet of maize gruel"
(Lewis 1978.59) The underlying ideology -which also aspired t o keep women constantly at
domestic and agrlcultural labor (Lewis 1978:60)-illustrates the uses that the "sad relic"
stereotype can all too easily be made t o serve.
For the Greeks the internal strain between the ultimately irreconcilable stereotypes of
"European" and "Mediterranean" becomes especially apparent in the internal policies of
the military dictatorship of 1967-74 The junta's claim that i t afforded a much-needed
discipline for the unruly Greeks provides another sobering illustration. I t justified a display
of moral discipline (cutting of beards and men's long hair, the prohibition of plate-breaking
[spasimo] at feasts, vigilance against blasphemy and sexual license) which symbolized total
control of the person by the junta. I t d i d so in a clearly "extroverted" way, deslgned t o pro-
tect the image of a renascent classical Greece. The prohibition of plate-breaking, for exam-
ple, was justified on the grounds that ~t showed the Greeks in a bad light before foreign-
ers-and this despite the fact that spasimo had recently become a tourist attraction
through the popularity of the f i l m Zorba the Creek.' Foreigners who were puzzled by the
junta's humorless stance mlght have done well t o reflect on the expressive appeal t o a
Western-supported d l c t a t o r s h i ~o f imposing "European" restraints on a "Mediterranean"
personality stereotype.
None of this means, of course, that advocates o f a discrete Mediterraneanist anthropol-

442 american ethnologist

ogy deliberately reproduce this same pattern of categorical control. Nevertheless, the
curlous ( ~ partlal)
f spllt between Balkan and Mediterranean subspecialtles certainly reflects
not only current political realities but also a long-standing argument about "national
character." The Slavic peoples were being stereotyped as having communist lnclinatlons as
early as the mid-19th century, apparently on the basis of an imperfect understanding of
zadruga organization; such chardcterizations played a significant role In the rhetoric of
both philhellenlsm and pan-Slavism, and then later of Marxist historiography as well (Herz-
feld 1982a:60; K a d i t 1976:202-203; Winner 1977) They exemplify the nationalistic charac-
terology that prescribed rigld cultural distinct~onsbetween the Creeks and their neighbors
t o the north, and provided a form of ex post facto justlflcation for subsequent territorial
claims and national hostilities-a process, what is more, that has been repeated in innumer-
able variations the world over. The scientific adoption of stereotypes only serves t o accen-
tuate what Caro Baroja (1970-72) calls the "mythlc activity" of popular discourse.
Such processes are part of the historlcal perspective that Davis (1977) rightly urges us t o
adopt. Thls perspective, however, should also include a more crltical historiography of our
own involvement In the area, especially since-as we have now been wisely reminded
(Kenny and Kertzer 1983:18)-members of these societies will prove increasingly unwilling
t o accept a purely passive role In the enterprise Part of the new self-awareness will entail
an examlnatlon of the stereotypes that have gulded the enterprise untll now-especially of
the encompasslng concept of the Medlterranean '
I now proceed t o document t w o otherwise excellent ethnographic analyses In whlch the
assumption of Medlterranean homogeneity has weakened the central argument The oblec-
tlve 1s not t o vlllfy the ethnographers, both of whom have In fact dlrected our attention t o
some highly significant evldence Thelr insistence on a strictly Medlterraneanist focus.
however, has choked o f f the very attention t o historlcal detall that Davis and others have
urged us t o undertake, and consequently subverted the dialectic between particularistic
ethnography and comparative analysis. More specifically, m y objective is t o show how the
hardening of such categories as "the Medlterranean" reinforces that of terms like "the evil
eye" or "honor." t o the polnt where each has come t o be regarded as a virtually sufficient
justification for the other. O f such circularities are stereotypes made

of horns and testicles

Puzzling over the symbolism found in several Mediterranean lands whereby manliness 1s
symbolized by the ram but cuckoldry by the billy goat, Blok (1981:427) has charged that
"anthropologists writlng on honour and shame in Medlterranean societies have fared no
better than earlier folklorists and modern students of semiotics," and that "their emphasis
has been on horns as such, on horns as a phallic symbol, and on horns as attributes of the
Devil" (e g., Pltt-Rivers 1961[1954]~116;1965:46, Campbell 1964.152). This, he remarks,
"leaves the question regarding the Implicit meaning of the cornute completely open" in the
quest for a better understanding of "the Mediterranean code of honour" (Blok 1981.427)
In the course of his attempt t o rectify the situation, Blok (1981:428-429) argues that the
key dlfference can be explained by reference t o the observed dlfference between the sex-
ual behavlor of rams and goats rams will not tolerate other rams' access t o thelr ewes
whereas billy goats seem generally cornplalsant A posslbly fatal objection t o h ~ sthesls 1s
posed by a dlscusslon of horn gestures In an early and slgnlflcantly lndlgenous literature
Thls conslsts of Byzantine wrltlngs that conslder the posslble relatlonshlp between the horn
gesture and anlmal complaisance In much the same way as Blok does but-a small b u t
radlcal difference-wlthout maklng any effectlve dlstlnctlon at all between the responses

the Mediterraneanist dilemma 443

of rams and goats t o lnvaslons of their respective sexual "territories" (see Psellos in
Koukoules 1949:307).
The symbolic complementarity of rams and goats 1s nevertheless apparent In several
Mediterranean (and other) cultures, ancient and modern, and Blok has taken palns t o docu-
ment this consistency from both historical and ethnographic sources Although his expla-
nation of the orlgins of this symbolism are inconclusive, his arguments for a shared
Mediterranean code of honor d o not depend on this appeal t o aboriginal forms alone They
are also based on the common distribution of horn symbolism and of certaln ideas about
gender and morality. In particular, he links the status of the ram as male symbol t o the Im-
portance, In the documented pastoral societies of the region, of physlcal strength and the
capaclty for meeting vlolence with violence. "reputations can only be made on the basis of
physlcal force and courage" (Blok 1981.434; emphasis added)
Here agaln, however, he has t o skate rather lightly over the ethnographic facts t o main-
tain the Mediterranean focus of his argument. N o doubt, as Black-Michaud (1975:180-181),
Campbell (1964.318), Meeker (1979:76), Pltt-Rivers (1965 55). Stlrling (1965.284), and many
others have observed, the possib~lityof retaliating violently marks a true man in many of
these societies. N o t only is this not an exclusively Mediterranean trait, but i t is not the
whole story. In western Crete, for example, a man's self-regard may be enhanced by his
refusal t o take a challenge seriously: one only fights with those whom one respects, and
one can humiliate even a worthy opponent by disdaining his call t o arms. The same is true
for Kabylla, another region t o which Blok (1981:433) appeals for evidence of the Mediter-
ranean code of honor (cf. Bourdieu 1965.204; 1977:12). I t is thus not only through physical
violence that a man establishes h ~ status;
s he can lose i t that way too, and he may gain im-
measurably more kudos if he simply implies that his would-be opponent is not worth the
trouble.
In such cases, of course, the threat of violence is still very much in evidence, and I
assume that Blok's argument implies as much. I t is more seriously flawed on questions of
ethnographic detail, and i t is here that we see how the a priori assumption of Mediterra-
nean cultural homogeneity can virtually generate new "facts." The following example also
shows that anthropologists who spurn the researches of "earlier folklorists and modern
students of semiotics" (Blok 1981:427), not t o mention philologists and linguists, risk mak-
ing assumptions which have been discredited in those disciplines for a long time and wlth
good reason. Blok's etymological arguments have already attracted the criticism that they
do not apply exclusively t o the Mediterranean lands (Alinei 1982:772-773). Ironically,
however, if there is one source of Mediterranean homogeneity on which we could all agree,
i t is surely the well-documented linguistic history of the region.
The problem is most acutely revealed In Blok's treatment of the Sarakatsan concept of
the varvatos In a gloss on Campbell (1964:269-270), Blok (1981:433) explains that, among
the Sarakatsani. "adult males must be barbatos, literally 'provided with a beard', but meta-
phorically 'well endowed with testicles.' " Since Blok is concerned with impllcit meanings,
we might assume that the application here of a literal/metaphorical distinction reflects
something mentioned in Campbell's original description. This is not the case, however Had
the "beard/test~cles"analogy been specified by Campbell's Sarakatsan informants, an in-
digenous view of male sexuality would have been interestingly amplified. In fact, the pro-
cess of inference is rather alarming and is betrayed by Blok's transliteration of Campbell's
Creek-letter text (barbatos instead of varvatos), using the pronunciation of ancient rather
than modern Creek. In all probability, the term is derlved from the Latin barbatus ("beard-
ed"), perhaps vla Itallan barbato. Anthropologically, however, this would only be a salient
datum if i t could be demonstrated that the Sarakatsani had some awareness of a beardltes-
ticles analogy, or if other aspects of their symbolism could be shown t o reveal the in-

444 american ethnologist

fluence of such a connection. Nothing in what Campbell says indicates anything of the
sort Blok's etymological deduction here seems t o hinge on the assumption that meanings
are transmitted in a more or less constant form within the Mediterranean culture area, an
area defined by the very system of symbolic equivalences and oppositions that Blok is in
fact attempting t o validate ethnographically. This IS circular reasoning
There is a hint, apparently overlooked by Blok, that the testlcular epithet may not be en-
tirely unconnected with the image of the goat as well as the ram Campbell (1964:270)
remarks that varvatos "is in no sense a moral term, and in other contexts i t may describe the
dishonourable conduct of a man who rapes a woman or bullies younger men."' The goat is
certainly a symbol of rampant and uncontrolled male sexuality In many parts of Greece.
whereas the ram is associated with the purity of the strong, self-possessed man. Thus, the
use of this eplthet among the Sarakatsani offers weak support at best for Blok's argument
His appeal t o the "beard" etymology contradicts his main point, since i t is goats rather than
rams that are bearded: hirsute tourists were once commented upon as "billy goats" in m y
presence (in Rhodes), and the epithet was evidently thought so rude that the speaker could
not bring himself t o elaborate Priests, too, are bearded and are similarly associated in folk
imagery with excesslve and uncontrolled sexuality (see Blum and Blum 1970:24-25), and
the gesture of stroking an imaginary beard means that someone has just told a lie. Finally,
we should note that the billy goat may stand for the Ideal type of aggressive male in an en-
tirely positive sense A proverbial couplet (mandinadha] from Glendi compares the billy
goat's refusal t o be constrained by the walls of a sheepfold wlth the Idealized Cretan male's
Irrepressible aggrandizement of self and lineage:

Tan ine o traghos dhinatos dhen tone sten I rnandra

0 andras kani ti venia k i okh1 venia ton andra

If the billy goat IS strong, the sheepfold can't hold h ~ m In

The m a n makes the I~neage,not the l ~ n e a g ethe m a n

Juxtaposition dramatizes the trope. the man who really counts in Clendi is the one who
despises resting o n his lineage's laurels, rather than hungrily seeklng t o add t o them. The
goat, not the ram, aptly epitomizes his lndomltable rebelliousness.

These examples show that a convincing case for Blok's pan-Mediterranean code would
have t o rest on an essentially neosurvivalist argument, namely, that i t is poorly represented
in certain Aegean villages today D a v ~ s(1977:255) sensibly warns that i t is "not necessary t o
posit an Ur-med~terraneansocial order, eroded here, pushed t o prominence by barely Iden-
tifiable pressures there." Rather, the evidence suggests that the symbols whlch Blok
analyzes are used with considerable internal variation and wlth richly inventive interpreta-
tlon at the local level, and that what we see instead of a single code is a highly complex
serles of overlapping and restlessly shifting bricolages. Both folklore and the semiotics of
gesture thus turn out, despite Blok's strictures, t o offer some very useful correctives t o the
essential rlgidity of his o w n argument.
Blok's (1981:430) principal goal is t o elucidate a Mediterranean code of honor the ex-
lstence of which he takes for granted, and t o which he "take[s] as specific" a set of fixed,
concurrent symbolic oppositions. In this way he is able t o treat Clendiot notions of
eghoismos (self-regard) as a basls for presumptive generalizations about Mediterranean
concepts of "honor"-a term that in fact very inadequately glosses eghoismos (Herzfeld
1980, Blok 1981:434). For a start, the Creek term hardly fits the requirements of Blok's o w n
definition. i t is Clendiot eghoismos that the "dishonorable" billy goat's impudence sym-
bollzes in the verse cited above The analytical level represented by this totalizing "trans-
lation" corresponds t o the equally absolute sense of "Mediterranean" at the descriptive
level More seriously, perhaps, all of these single-stranded reductions of complex symbols

the Mediterraneanist dilemma 445

from a wide range of communities are summarlzed In a simple two-column chart (Blok
1981:430-431). This reduces existing charts of a similar kind (e.g., d u Boulay 1974.104),
themselves merely diagrammatic conventions for use In highly specific ethnographic ac-
counts, t o a general formula that 1s then, in circular fashion, used as a means of ordering
and reinterpreting the ethnographic data that have already been thus assembled.

What is more, the chart is demonstrably untrue. The "honor : shame - : men : women" for-
mula, t o take the most glaring "equivalence," has been severely criticized (for Greece
alone, see Dubisch 1974; Hirschon 1978; Herzfeld 1980) and seems not t o have been intend-
e d in so simplistic a sense by the first ethnographers t o study moral systems in the area
(e.g , Friedl 1962; Campbell 1964; Perlstlany 1965; Pitt-Rivers 1961) As for the "male :
female .: good . evll" formulation. Campbell's (1964.278) orlginal study shows clearly that
the symbollc associations are far more complex; and in both Greece (e.g., Campbell
1964:324, 354) and Italy (Ciovannini 1981) the image of the Virgin Mary is at least as impor-
tant a deflnlens of woman's social essence as that of the Devil Indeed, Ciovannini
(1981:424) shows clearly that the manliness of men 1s explicitly linked t o the Madonna-like
conceptualization of women: a man becomes cornuto only through his betrayal by women
of the other sort.

The rigidity of the two-column diagram also makes i t hard t o analyze such common b u t
elusive uses of symbolism as irony, self-mockery, or simply creative reworking. Pefkiot
men, for example, share the wldely reported Creek stereotype of women as foolish and
credulous; b u t as I was told, when women are intelligent at all they are diabolical in their
cleverness (Here, perhaps, the credulous/~ntelligentopposition reproduces that of Madon-
na/Devil -the villagers certainly d o not regard simple goodness as a good trait for a man t o
have.) A Pefkiot illustrated the theme In a hlghly instructive way. First, as an example of the
wiles of the female brain, he related how the Devll had wagered with a woman that she
could not run a race with him and stay dry. She agreed and they set o f f , when a downpour
induced by the conniving Satan began, she took o f f her clothes (itself a symbol of sin) and
only p u t them on again upon finishing the race M y informant then proceeded t o describe
an incident in which, walking from Pefko t o another village, he was caught in a sudden
squall. He immediately remembered the story, stripped, and continued on h ~ way,
s ducking
into a roadside dltch whenever people appeared Arriving at the outskirts of the other
village, he p u t his clothes back on and paraded his dry condition before the astonished eyes
of the inhabitants. Note that this was a man uslng the stereotype of female cunning t o
model his o w n actions; and note, too, that he was proud of h ~ cleverness
s in putting the o l d
folktale t o good use. Where does his behavior f i t on the two-column diagram? And how are
we t o explain his evident lack of embarrassment-indeed, his equally evident glee-at hav-
ing been able t o imitate a legendary woman?

The point is that such images, llke those of the ltallans described by Ciovannini, are dlf-
ferentially activated according t o circumstances. Any attempt t o reify the symbolic at-
tributes of elther gender in a given community-let alone the entire Mediterranean-can-
not be other than ethnographically misleading. Here, then, are the horns of the Mediterra-
neanist dllemma exemplified: whether t o risk caricature by insisting on a geographically
determinate framework of investigation, or t o risk the disintegration of that framework by
giving priority t o the particulars of ethnograph~cdescription. If the latter strategy delays
the elegant formulation of the framework in question, then surely i t is the framework,
rather than the ethnographic studies i t supposedly organizes, that should be rethought and
perhaps even jettisoned in favor of something more productive.

446 american ethnologist

 horns and eyes: ethnographic juxtapositions

To show what deep roots the Mediterranean stereotype appears t o have put down In an-
thropologlcal thought, I turn t o another cornute defense of Mediterraneanism. In a recent
study of evil eye beliefs and practices on Pantelleria, C a l t (1982:668) argues that in the
Mediterranean area "the evll eye IS observed t o have sufficiently consistent qualities t o
make ~t an 'ethnographic fact' across cultural and even historical boundaries " This IS in-
tended as a counterargument t o m y o w n proposal t o "dissolve" the evil eye category as In-
adequate for the purposes of cross-cultural comparison (Herzfeld 1981). To make his point,
C a l t has produced a thoroughly documented plece of particularistic analysls As he
observes In conclus~on,the evil eye concept can be used as a starting point for the exam-
ination of conceptual clusters, our respectwe analyses, which end by focuslng on quite
disparate themes, share this heuristic orlentation

To dlssolve the evil eye category, however, is n o t t o argue that "there IS no such thingJ'-
a nominalistic contention which falls into the same logical error as its opposlte The prob-
lem lles in the next stage of the argument, when the relfled culture area is used t o generate
evldence In support of itself In both Blok's analysls of the honor-shame complex and Calt's
of the evil eye, a slngle cultural trait is matched t o this unrefracted geographical entity As
with Blok's treatment of varvatos, moreover, Calt's (1982:668) analysis relles t o a disturbing
extent on purely speculative ethnography: "A Creek and a Slcilian sailor d o not share exact-
ly the same ranges of meanlng about the evll eye, b u t each grasps familiar things about the
other's concept and there are ample grounds for a llvely comparison of notes " Has such a
conversation ever been recorded) I certainly concur that ~t would constitute a priceless
ethnographic document; b u t until we have something of that sort in hand, i t is decidedly
premature t o justify clalms of cultural homogeneity on the strength of imaginative recon-
structions

The other difficulties arise from these basic premises. I n the first place, farn~llarltycan be
deceptive, as the archaeological arguments below show in detail. Then again, for every sug-
gestlon that there are elements that people from different Mediterranean cultures will find
familiar, one can raise an example of complete divergence. Di Stas1 (1981 271, a popularizer
of the Med~terraneanistvlew of evil eye beliefs, recounts that his Jewlsh mother could not
abide his father's amuletic practices. Johnson (1982. personal communication) recounts
that South Italian officials stationed in Somalia used the tusks of w i l d boar t o ward off the
evll eye, m u c h t o the disgust of the Moslem Somalis, whose o w n view of malignant ocular
powers was also slgnlficantly different at the conceptual level. "The irony was that though
the Somalis apparently d o not share the 'first glance' fear, their reaction t o the 'pig-tooth'
(considered harun or "unclean") was exactly what the Italians wantedJ'-it always diverted
the irritated first glance of any Somali who walked Into an Italian's room. O f course, Calt's
argument does not, strictly speaking, depend upon the tracing of absolute commonality
throughout the area. Nevertheless, his imaginary sallors' conversation does not seem t o ac-
commodate such divergent accounts as these. Moreover, h ~ semphasis o n the importance
of the curing process as a diagnostic feature of the evil eye complex hardly favors his
thesis. In Pefko, oil-drop techniques much like those C a l t (1982:672-673) describes are
employed, b u t nothing of the sort is found in Clendl, where, instead, counting the orifices
of the body and the use of spells involving bodily and abstract measurement are used
Again, we should bear in mind that category "dissolution" does not mean that the evil eye
"does not exlst," b u t simply that little analytical insight is t o be gained merely from the
regionally based definition of a polythetlc cluster of t r a ~ t s .

the Mediterraneanist dilemma 447

 The most serious difficulties in Galt's (1982:671) presentation arise from his use of ar-
chaeological inference, and this takes us stra~ghtt o the central problem posed by the need
for historical perspectives.

I t IS safe to assume t h a t the evll eye synthetic Image has been part o f the culture o f the Island slnce
remote antlqulty at least slnce the t l m e when ~t was a P u n ~ ccolony and thus helr t o lore
f r o m the anclent Near East the r e p u t e d o r ~ g i n ,according t o the weight o f opinion, of the e v ~eyel All
subsequent ethnlc groups t h a t o c c u p ~ e dthe Island are well k n o w n t o have Included evll eye In some
way w ~ t h ~t hne ~ rbellef systems D l f f u s l o n o f the Image t o the Island therefore happened very
early and reoccurred as populations o f d ~ f f e r l n ge t h n l c ~ t ymlgrated t o ~ t sshores brlnglng w l t h them
variants o f elements o f circum-Mediterranean culture [emphases added]

While there may be a substantial degree of truth In this statement, ~t is again largely based
on speculative h ~ s t o r ~ c a l
reconstruction, and the emphas~zedwords show how much ~t
depends on special pleading Although Calt does argue aga~nstthe r e i f i c a t ~ o nof culture
area constructs, his mode of argumentation does more t o reinforce than t o undermine the
impression of some historically rooted Mediterranean homogene~tyMore specifically, his
argument IS keyed t o some general assumptions about the archaeolog~calev~dencefor a
pan-Mediterranean belief system that he shares with numerous other commentators. This
evidence brings horn and eye symbolism into close juxtaposition, and thereby generates a
veritable cornucopia of interpretat~ons,most of which are safely beyond verification. They
do, however, throw some interesting light on the processes whereby the Mediterraneanist
thesis has been created and maintained.

horns and eyes: ancient evidence

One of the enabling conditions for the emergence of the Mediterraneanist thesis In
ethnology has been a broad agreement about methods and f o c ~Archaeological
. research in
the circum-Mediterranean, by contrast, has suffered "an unparalleled degree of compart-
r n e n t a l ~ z a t ~ o tno, the point that, for example, students of the Classical world feel l ~ t t l eaf-
f i n ~ t ywith their colleagues working in the Maghreb or the Levant" (Fotiadis 1982:608). As a
result, much of the archaeological comparat~vismof e x p l ~ c i t l yMediterraneanist perspec-
t ~ v eis the product of a more or less antiquar~antradition (cf. Trump 1980) and heavily em-
phasizes such phenomena as the cultural d i f f u s ~ o nof religious symbolism Essentially dif-
fus~oniststudies of eye and horn symbolism fed a growing popular occultist literature (e.g ,
D I Stasi's 1981:103-110 use of Crawford 1957), and the extens~vediscoveries at Catal
Huyuk and elsewhere generated a more sophisticated form of the same argument In
scholarly writings. I cite both genres here t o suggest, quite deliberately, that the line be-
tween them may not always be as clear as scholars would prefer t o believe
The e v ~ eye
l complex in Greece, for example, has been "traced" t o eye designs at Catal
Huyiik (Blum and Blum 1970:309) Calt (1982:670) s ~ m i l a r l yargues that the cornute gesture,
prophylactically used by Sicilians against the evil eye,

has an anclent hlstory as a prlmary factor t h a t flrst shows ltself In the upralsed hand o f the upper
paleollthlc Venus of Laussel ~n the Dordogne and continues t o crop u p ~n the anclent w o r l d
especially at Catal H u y u k In Turkey where ~t 1s a key rltual theme

Maher (1982:776) connects the Irish sheela-na-gig withC'the ithyphallic herms of the Hall-
statt Celts and contemporary classical Greece" as signs of the "evil eye" of a potent male
lord. Such arguments are n o t so much p l a u s ~ b l eas intrinsically interesting-that is, for an
ethnography of the s y m b o l ~ ccategory of anthropological discourse which "/the Mediter-
ranean/" has become
These arguments are characterized by a form of literalism-the implicit suggestion that
the relationship between a particular symbol and its referent is unproblemat~cal,invariant,

448 american ethnologist

and therefore capable of cross-cultural generalization. When eyes and horns appear
throughout the Medlterranean reglon, they are automatically assumed t o form part of the
"same" symbolic system, n o matter how far apart they are in date or location. Yet these
scholars must be aware, at the ethnographic level, of just how dangerous such Inferences
are The eye for example, also appears as the Eye of C o d In Creek church decoration But
the most dlsturblng aspect of thls mode of argument IS, once agaln ~ t sclrcularlty The
underlying syllogism can be reconstructed thus eyes and horns form a symbollc complex
In certaln communltles found around the Medlterranean Ilttoral, the same comblnatlon 1s
found In archaeological sltes In the same general area, therefore the Medlterranean IS

culturally homogenous; therefore, the sets of symbols are essentially "the same" through-
o u t the area and time perlod in questlon. But what is the common symbolic set?

Once we p u t aslde the admittedly opaque questlon of meaning (e.g., C a l t 1982:671), an

even more fundamental dlfflculty confronts us. in what sense, if any, are the various eyes
representations of the same image? All we have of a really constant nature is the assocla-
tlon of hornlike signs w i t h eyellke signs Even ~fwe provisionally accept the eyes, the horns
remain obstinately unconvincing. What klnd of horns are they? Those of Catal Hiiyijk seem
t o be ox and perhaps also ram horns (Mellaart 1975:108). Even Crawford (1957:47) was
relatively cautious, noting that the origin of the mano cornuta was "uncertain and may
have been multiple [so] we . would merely suggest that the use of the horns as a pro-
phylactlc may perhaps have arisen from the blending or confusion of t w o dlstinct thlngs-
the horns of the bull-god and the uplifted arms of a worshipper." Maher (1982:775), who is
not averse t o positing archaeological links with ethnographic materials, nevertheless con-
cludes that "a horn is not just a horn " Yet Blok has argued-and has made his claim cen-
tral t o his version of the "Medlterranean code of honor"-that the cornute symbol conslsts
of goat horns. Surely the difference IS not trivial? I t would be illogical t o retaln Blok's treat-
ment of the cornute as an unambiguously negatlve capricorn if at the same time we ac-
cepted Calt's llnkage between the cornute hand gesture and the most sacred mysteries of
prehistoric Anatolla By the same token, we cannot prove that there was in fact no connec-
tion between the t w o horn symbol~sms However, the onus of proof surely lies with those
who want t o use the connection as the basis for justifying a Mediterranean culture area

The archaeological record is ~ n c r e a s ~ n gcoming

ly t o be read In the light of ethnographlc
evldence as a means of "transcend[ing] the present-past dichotomy" (Fotiadis 1982-608)
This laudable goal also demands greater s e n s i t ~ v ~ t o
y what is, in semiotic terms, a problem
of ~ c o n i c ~ t y - o treating
f s ~ m i l a r ~ t i eas
s glven in the objective world-a problem t o which
anthropologists have already given critical attention In other contexts (e.g., Forge 1970)
Ancient-modern likenesses are vital t o the rhetoric of n a t i o n a l ~ s t ~ideolog~es,
c w here they
form the basis of territorial claims and where their very resistance t o c r l t ~ c aanalysis
l serves
those goals well (see Herzfeld 1982a) By contrast, in ethnographlc analysis such likenesses
are potential traps The absence of documentation is critical; where, for example, scholars
have been able t o trace a linguistic and iconographic tradition In detall, they have pro-
duced much subtler reasoning. Mellinkoff's (1970) study of the famous horned Moses of
Michelangelo is a case In p o ~ n tThe positive c o n n o t a t ~ o nof horns in many parts of the
world-not, be i t noted, in the Medlterranean alone-provides a context in which t o
understand how the Hebrew term qeren, wlth ~ t sdouble sense of "horns" and "rays of
light," appeared In the Vulgate as cornuta, and so entered the ~conographict r a d i t ~ o nof
western Europe in t h ~ smore spec~flcsense ( M e l l ~ n k o f 1970:3,
f 13, 138). The horned Moses
nevertheless occupied a somewhat ambiguous place In m e d ~ e v a lpopular hagiology, par-
ticularly because of his association with the Jews (1970 135-137) Such detailed research is
usually not possible where the symbolic systems of e a r l ~ e rages and partially nonliterate

the Mediterraneanist dilemma 449

communities are concerned. This does not, however, justify baslng arguments about the
historical continuity of Mediterranean culture on speculation instead.
The determined search for archaeological antecedents t o the evil eye complex serves t o
buttress the stereotypical vlew of Mediterranean people as irrationally subject t o envy and
superstition. This perspective has also had a reverse effect, through which the "popular"
rellgion o f late antiquity has been treated as sharing the supposed inferiority of its modern
"survivals" (Brown 1981:20). Despite his predilection for llnks wlth the remote past, C a l t
(1982.677, 679) has firmly and wisely rejected any such insinuation of ongoing conceptual
infer~ority,argulng instead that the Pantescans' new-found desire t o be envied i s a direct
result of capitallst penetration of their world But in so doing he may also have weakened
his own argument for a characteristically Med~terraneancultural complex. In that case, the
interpretwe Inferences he and others have drawn from that argument are even more
seriously a t rlsk than the circularity of their ethnoarchaeological dernonstratlon has shown
What is more, might the Pantescans' self-characterizat~onas envious people not serve the
further aims of the very societies from which this intrusive capitalism emanates? If so, we
should certainly hesitate before accepting the Pantescans' negative self-image as
analytically separable from our own inherited stereotypes of Mediterranean society.
The penetration of evil eye symbolism by modern commerce has another, and related,
lesson in store for us. Eye beads were certainly circulating along the pilgrimage routes be-
tween Cyprus and the Holy Land, and perhaps even further afield; and the amuletic forms
throughout the Arab world and Creece are distinctly similar. (Note, however, that the cor-
nute hand, although used as a gesture t o ward off the evil eye, rarely if ever appears as a
material amulet In Creek communities.) Whether these amulets were regarded as "the
same" is, of course, the question that underlies the present debate. Today, glass eye beads
are imported into Creece in enormous numbers from Czechoslovakia and Japan. In Athens,
a specialty store called M a t i ("Eye") sells complex arrangements of eye symbols that in-
clude not only the f a m ~ l i a reye beads, but also the "eye goddess" motif. Clearly, the stereo-
type sells. I t emblematically reimports into the universe of tourists and Athenian sophisti-
cates an argument about cultural continuity that began with nationalistic folklore but has
since expanded t o a new pan-Med~terraneanism I t is an argument that, if past precedent i s
anything t o go by, will soon appear in the domestic symbolism of the most remote villages
as well Virtually all ethnographic writing i s permeable t o the world i t describes. The com-
rnerclalization of the evil eye may cause us t o wince, as do the pat generalities informants
serve up on the subject o f "Creek" or "Mediterranean character " But all the same, they d o
constitute an ethnographic presence.

conclusion: the fascination of analytical closure

Both Blok (1981) and C a l t (1982) are clearly sensitive t o the imperfect closure of the
Mediterranean culture area construct. Rlok explores the ramificat~onsof the "honor code"
beyond the lands immediately adjacent t o the Mediterranean Sea, whlle Calt imaginatively
suggests the significance of the evil eye concept as a symbol capable of mediating the
Pantescans' Inexorable absorption by the world economy. By contrast, their shared in-
sistence on a Mediterranean focus, subtly modulated though it is, leads them into in-
ferences which, if unchecked, could damage future comparative research. Essentially, the
weakness of both arguments lies in the way in which assumptions of homogeneity turn the
arguments i n on themselves
O f the two, C a l t shows a greater willingness t o confront the polythetlc character of the
phenomenon under discussion. This is done by the a p p l ~ c a t i o nof Needham's "synthetic Im-

450 american ethnologist

age" model t o the evll eye construct-a curlous choice for an explicitly reglonal level of
analysis. Needham (1978) does not restrict his model t o particular cultural or areal tradl-
tlons.'On the contrary, he remarks that the creation of a synthetic image "is not necessari-
ly a response t o experience, and we may not presume that i t i s otherwise determined by
social facts" (1978:45). This does not mean that the evll eye, if treated as a synthetic image,
would necessarily appear throughout the world I t does, however, raise serious doubts
about the advisablllty of linklng the phenomenon t o a particular group of cultures The
fascination of the malignant eye-note that fascinum is its Latln designation, cognate
vaskania one of its Creek terms (Herzfeld 1981 565)-has clearly captured the anthropolog-
ical imagination, t o the point where every ethnographic and archaeological eye or horn
tends t o be uncritically interpreted as an element in this fundamentally indissoluble syn-
thetic image. Whlle we may acknowledge the polythetic organlzatlon of the concept (e g ,
C a l t 1982 669), the lure of generalization remalns. As Needham (1978 45) himself observes,
"the synthesis may b e . . just as 'primary' as are the factors that it integrates." This is, on
the evidence before us, as true for anthropologists as i t i s for the people they study
W e return now t o a point I emphasize with care at the beginning of this essay: that the
discussion does not concern the ontological status of "the evil eye" or "the
Mediterranean," b u t the advantages and risks of matching t w o categories belonging t o our
own symbolic universe as f u l l y as they d o t o that of our informants. Some will, perhaps, ob-
ject that I mix popular occultism and old-fashioned archaeology with more learned anthro-
pological sources, but in a sense this devlce-which I am happy t o acknowledge-under-
scores the point. An ethnography of the Medlterranean 1s incomplete without an analysis of
the "Mediterranean" category itself, and that inevitably means that we must include our
own familiar forms of discourse In the analysls.
Many proponents of a Mediterraneanist specialization have taken conscientious pains t o
avoid relfylng the culture area Cilmore (1982:180-181), for example, suggests that "what
anthropologists impressionalistically have felt t o be Medlterranean parallels reflect rather
a sensitivity t o some underlying dialectic or subsurface interplay of opposites Davis "

(1977 255) maintains that the Mediterranean "is In no sense a homogeneous culture area."
The t w o authors whose recent work is the object of the present analysls similarly show thelr
awareness of the traps; on the evldence presented above, however, they clearly fail t o
avoid them. Instead, they are caught, with startling and instructive literality, on the horns
of a dilemma: how t o turn a descriptive category Into theoretical capital. As a result, their
otherwise appealing ethnographic analyses acquire some poorly argued and unconvinc~ng
appendages, especially the "ethnoarchaeology" of horns and eyes and the "archaeology of
knowledge" implied by the putatively uniform Medlterranean code of honor. It would be
unfortunate Indeed if these essentially circular demonstrations, rather than the sound
descrlptlon and analysis t o which they are attached, were t o become the underpinning of
future research.

notes

Acknowledgments. A version of thls paper was delivered at the 82nd Annual Meeting of the Amerl-
can Anthropolog~calAssoc~atlon,in Chicago. I am grateful for the c r i t ~ c a commentary
l of John D ~ V I C
and D a v ~ dD. Cilmore on that occasion; for the useful comments provided by Loring M . Danforth,
Maureen I . Ciovannini, Thomas W Jacobsen. John H . McDowell, Jerome R. Mintz, and Michael D.
Murphy; and for the incisive readings provlded by the A € editor and reviewers
' Pefko is a small agricultural village on Rhodes. Clendi, a community of mixed economy with a
traditional preponderance of pastoralism In the foothills of M t Ida, Western Crete (for a more deta~led
comparison see Herzfeld 1980) Both names are pseudonyms
"European" is a term variously used by Creeks to Include themselves (i.e., as heirs to the class~cal

the Mediterraneanist dilemma 451

her~tage,o r In a narrowly geographical sense)or t o exclude themselves ( i . e , when speak~ngof cultures
t o the north and west as "superior")
' Conversely of course t h ~ sf ~ l mwas assoc~atedw ~ t hsuch antljunta names as that of the composer
M l k i s Theodorakls, and ~tsymbolized t o m a n y the very ant~theslsof Western d ~ r e c t e dcontrol over the
Creek people
T h ~ sc o u l d perhaps be better expressed by adoptlng the s e m l o t ~ cof s ~ n g l eslashes-as In ' I M e d ~ t e r -
ranean,' - t o " l n d ~ c a t es o m e t h ~ n gIntended as an expression or a sign vehlcle (Eco 1976 X I ) W h ~ l ethe
conventlon Introduces an added c o m p l e x ~ t ywe clearly need t o be constantly r e m ~ n d e dof the ease
w l t h w h ~ c hwe slip Into r e ~ f y ~ nagcategory of t h ~ ssort
Campbell's d e f i n ~ t i o nof "moral" IS clearly narrower here than his usual use of the term i m p l ~ e s ,
presumably t o d~stinguishthe term f r o m such more o b v ~ o u s l ye t h ~ c a jludgments as those conveyed by
the use of eghoitmot. trmc. and so o n
' T h e problem I S a good deal more complex than t h ~ s Symbols . are p o l y s e m ~ cand the transforma-
t ~ o n so f their meaning m a y be d r a s t ~ c Desplte ~ t sobvious d e r l v a t ~ o n for
, example, the S ~ c ~ l cornute
~an
gesture has recently become so closely i d e n t ~ f ~ ewdi t h the rnaiia pose of protest that thls m a y well
become ~ t s"primary" meaning w ~ t hthe passage of t l m e (see Catania 1978.108)
C a l t (1982 679) sees Ardener's (1970.159) "template" concept as similar t o Needham's 'synthetlc
Image Thls I S essentially a misunderstanding of the latter, as Calt's (1982 679) observat~onthat the
"

template 1s "not construed as havlng relevance across cultural boundar~es"clearly Indicates; pace
C a l t , moreover, it is "further and more e x p l ~ c ~ t developed"
ly elsewhere, notably In Ardener (1975,
19781, though under a d ~ f f e r e n t e r m ~ n o l o g y These later epiphan~esof the concept make ~tq u l t e clear
that ~t I S n o t culture-bound In any sense, a p o s i t ~ o nthat accords logically w ~ t hArdener's refusal t o
treat any cultural entity as ~ m m u t a b l yd e f ~ n e d

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S u b m ~ t t e d1 6 September 1983
Accepted 8 November 1983
Rev~sedversion r e c e ~ v e d5 January 1984

454 american ethnologist

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The Horns of the Mediterraneanist Dilemma
Michael Herzfeld
American Ethnologist, Vol. 11, No. 3. (Aug., 1984), pp. 439-454.
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Notes

1
Honour and Shame: Problems in the Comparative Analysis of Moral Systems
Michael Herzfeld
Man, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 2. (Jun., 1980), pp. 339-351.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0025-1496%28198006%292%3A15%3A2%3C339%3AHASPIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

7
The Evil Eye as Synthetic Image and Its Meanings on the Island of Pantelleria, Italy
Anthony H. Galt
American Ethnologist, Vol. 9, No. 4, Symbolism and Cognition II. (Nov., 1982), pp. 664-681.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-0496%28198211%299%3A4%3C664%3ATEEASI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E

7
The Evil Eye as Synthetic Image and Its Meanings on the Island of Pantelleria, Italy
Anthony H. Galt
American Ethnologist, Vol. 9, No. 4, Symbolism and Cognition II. (Nov., 1982), pp. 664-681.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-0496%28198211%299%3A4%3C664%3ATEEASI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E

References Cited

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Rams and Billy-Goats

Mario Alinei; J. P. Maher
Man, New Series, Vol. 17, No. 4. (Dec., 1982), pp. 771-776.
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Rams and Billy-Goats: A Key to the Mediterranean Code of Honour

Anton Blok
Man, New Series, Vol. 16, No. 3. (Sep., 1981), pp. 427-440.
Stable URL:
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Towards a Social Anthropology of the Mediterranean [and Comments and Reply]

Jeremy Boissevain; Joseph B. Aceves; Jeremy Beckett; Stanley Brandes; Thomas Crump; J. Davis;
David D. Gilmore; C. C. M. Griffin; Vincenzo Padiglione; Julian Pitt-Rivers; Dimitra Schönegger;
Robert Wade
Current Anthropology, Vol. 20, No. 1. (Mar., 1979), pp. 81-93.
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Review: Consciousness and Class in Southern Spain

Reviewed Work(s):
The People of the Plain: Class and Community in Lower Andalucia by David D. Gilmore
Metaphors of Masculinity: Sex and Status in Andalusian Folklore by Stanley Brandes
James W. Fernandez
American Ethnologist, Vol. 10, No. 1. (Feb., 1983), pp. 165-173.
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Review: [Untitled]
Reviewed Work(s):
Journal of Mediterranean Anthropology and Archaeology, 1,1 by Nikolaos Xirotiris; Barbara
Ottaway
Michael Fotiadis
American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 86, No. 4. (Oct., 1982), pp. 607-609.
Stable URL:
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The Evil Eye as Synthetic Image and Its Meanings on the Island of Pantelleria, Italy
Anthony H. Galt
American Ethnologist, Vol. 9, No. 4, Symbolism and Cognition II. (Nov., 1982), pp. 664-681.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0094-0496%28198211%299%3A4%3C664%3ATEEASI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-E

Woman: A Dominant Symbol Within the Cultural System of a Sicilian Town

Maureen J. Giovannini
Man, New Series, Vol. 16, No. 3. (Sep., 1981), pp. 408-426.
Stable URL:
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Review: European and Mediterranean Studies, an Overview

Reviewed Work(s):
Social Change in a Peripheral Society: The Creation of a Balkan Colony by Daniel Chirot
People of the Mediterranean: An Essay in Comparative Social Anthropology by J. Davis
Catholics and Protestants: Agricultural Modernization in Two German Villages by Gunter Golde
Family and Inheritance: Rural Society in Western Europe, 1200-1800 by Jack Goody; Joan
Thirsk; E. P. Thompson
The One Blood: Kinship and Class in an Irish Village by Elliott Leyton
Mediterranean Family Structures by J. G. Peristiany
Kinship and Modernization in Mediterranean Society by J. G. Peristiany
The Fate of Shechem: Or the Politics of Sex by Julian Pitt-Rivers
East European Peasantries: Social Relations: An Annotated Bibliography of Periodical Articles
by Irwin T. Sanders; Walter C. Bisselle
Culture and Political Economy in Western Sicily by Jane Schneider; Peter Schneider
Three Bells of Civilization: The Life of an Italian Hill Town by Sydel Silverman
Peasant Wisdom: Cultural Adaptation in a Swiss Village by Daniela Weinberg
Joel Halpern
American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 82, No. 1. (Mar., 1980), pp. 108-113.
Stable URL:
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Honour and Shame: Problems in the Comparative Analysis of Moral Systems

Michael Herzfeld
Man, New Series, Vol. 15, No. 2. (Jun., 1980), pp. 339-351.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0025-1496%28198006%292%3A15%3A2%3C339%3AHASPIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Y

Meaning and Morality: A Semiotic Approach to Evil Eye Accusations in a Greek Village
Michael Herzfeld
American Ethnologist, Vol. 8, No. 3, Symbolism and Cognition. (Aug., 1981), pp. 560-574.
Stable URL:
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The Etymology of Excuses: Aspects of Rhetorical Performance in Greece

Michael Herzfeld
American Ethnologist, Vol. 9, No. 4, Symbolism and Cognition II. (Nov., 1982), pp. 644-663.
Stable URL:
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Mexican National Character and Circum-Mediterranean Personality Structure

Carroll Quigley
American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 75, No. 1. (Feb., 1973), pp. 319-322.
Stable URL:
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The Question of the Zadruga in Slovenia: Myth and Reality in Žerovnica

Irene Portis Winner
Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 50, No. 3. (Jul., 1977), pp. 125-134.
Stable URL:
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