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    Τζόγος

    Uploaded by

    Dafni Katsara

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 9
    8 A Contest with Money: Gambling and the Politics of © Disinterested Sociality in Aegean Greece Evthymios Papataxiarchis Gambling in Greece is an illegal activity unless it occurs in a licensed place. Yet, despite its well publicized suppression by the authoritis, it enjoys a great popu- larity especially in the countryside. As it is linked to rapid economic transforma- tions, a thriving underground economy, and a black market in money, gambling highlights cultural idioms that have been particularly salient in the course of the 1980s. Ie epitomizes a spendthrift attitude at the grassroots level privileging of consumption over production, and @ commitment to the “present” that is com- bined with a disregard for the future. In political terms, as gambling usually de- velops at the interstices of legality and illegality, it reflects the problematic rela- tion of the Greeks with the state and the law. Therefore, in many respects, the analysis of gambling provides a key for understanding Greek “nprmlessness” that is, both the way individual Greeks fail to conform to institutional rules and the way the Greek government fails at times to meet the expectations of its partners in the European Union. .-_ In this paper I will offer a local, historically minded and ethnographically | based insight into spendthrift behavior and the more general emphasis on the |‘present” that underlies this behavior. I do this through the analysis of illegal forms of card playing and dice throwing as I observed them in Moura, a village community of north Lesbos." More particularly, I will discuss gambling in the context of the coffee house as an aspect of a counter-hegemonic space that vas. historically established in conditions of the prolonged political and economic ‘marginalization of the island, In this context, gambling becomes an act of resis- tance to market and state domination, an act of defiance agains y. Throagh multiple inversions, a position of heavy monetary dependence is symbolically re A Contest with Money. 159 transformed into one,of autonomy. Here, I will specifically focus on the tecon- ceptualization of money (and of the economic more generally) that is achieved in gambling and try to show how these new meanings ate invested in oppositional a well as transformative ways of relating to the slate. Let me start with a preliminary note on reciprocity and politics. Gambling has often been defined asa form of “negative reciprocity” since it engages actors who ae in the business of taking from one another (Sahlins 1965; Mitchell 1988). Yet in contrast to other forms of negative reciprocity, gambling seems to be highly politicized. This is primarily due to a widely observed link between gambling and processes of commodification, monetization, and hierarchical encompass- rent within dominant orders—a link that is faciitated’by the role of money as a ‘morally ambiguous symbol that indiscriminately crosses boundacies, So there are some cases where gambling is seen as “gifting” and as antithetical to capital accu- ‘mulation (MacLean 1984) and others where gambling isan innovative response to capitalist strains (Mitchell 1988), leading to a radical reconceptualization of some basic social givens of the economy (Verdery 1995). In these examples gam- bing is depicted not just as a competition between players but also.as the site of antagonism between the local society and encompassing orders (see Wasserfall 1990; also Zimmer 1987; Geertz 1973). Here, I will try to pursue this line of analysis and show how gambling practices contest the external boundary of the local community by rearranging the semantic properties of money, which is fun- damentally a “symbol of limitlessness” (Wasserfall 1990:335), and by turning ‘against hierarchical encompassment. This is not a static opposition but a process of “mutual appropriation” between hierazchical levels (Thomas 1991:3). ‘More particularly, I will treat gambling as a form of “constructive resistance.” ‘Most of the politics of gambling involves a rich symbolic “work” of inversions be tween taking and giving, dependence and autonomy, hierarchy and equality, In employing the concept of “constructive resistance,” I want to focus on resistance as creative action and.not as passive reaction to the conditions of domination. I am talking about agency that emerges in engagement with cverarching power re- lations, and about culture as the bottom line of all polities and the foundation of “The creative act of contestation. This implies a broad notion of resistance as a contest over hegemonic meanings that may be implicit or explicit (see Kaplan and Kelly 1994), Further, I want to suggest that a considerable “portion” of the work of resistance amounts to a conceptual redefinition of dependence and that this cultural work may be politically ffective in renegotiating the content of par- ticular power arrangements. Context: Political Marginalization and Economic Dependence ‘Some notes on the historical aspects of marginalization are necessary for under- standing the politics of gambling in Aegean Greece. Since its formation in the early nineteenth century, the Greek state has been internally perceived as a colo: 160 Erthymios Papataxiarchis nizing force, the institutional agent of a “western” hegemonic project (see Herzfeld 1987). This attitude was enhanced by the application of a highly central- ized model of communal organization that contradicted earlier experiences of communal self-administration under the Ottoman mille system. The historical first comers to Greek unification gradually resolved this problem through dlien- telist forms of political integration. The latecomers, however, were firmly estab- lished at the political margins (see Mavrogordatos 1983). Politically excluded and denied equal access to state controlled political and economic resources, some of these new Greek territories, to which Lesbos and the big islands of the eastern ‘Aegean belong, eventually turned to radical, antistate politics (as did the refugees that came to Greece in the 1920s). North Lesbos represents an extreme example of the radical politics that ‘emerged as a response to long-term marginalization. During the Nazi occupa- tion, and the civil war that followed—when the state lost control of many rural areas in Greece—the procommunist National Liberation Front (EAM) enjoyed ‘massive support in this region. The sense of local autonomy, which was sustained through late Ottoman rule, was insttutionalized in forms of popular govern- ‘ment, and unionization was strengthened. Consequently, the outlawed Commu nist Party of Greece became the dominant party in the region during the postwar Aecades. The internal migration that linked these rural communities to the big urban centers, and the rural/urban ties that resulted, strengthened organizational links with the primarily urban, communist left and contributed to the reproduc- tion ofa radical, left-wing politics of protest and resistance against the repressive, authoritarian state of the post~Civil War era.‘ ‘These historic conditions of political marginalization have been closely inter- ‘woven with a whole set of economic hierarchies and dependencies. Mouria’s ‘agricultural economy is largely an olive monocultivation. Since the Tanzimat, the ‘Ottoman reform in the middle of the nineteenth century, the local economy has been linked to the regional and international market in olive oil. Monetization hhas been one consequence of this link. Another effect was the stratification of the land tenure system and the social differentiation between a small group of big commercial landlords (afentika, bosses) and the bulk of dependent laborers. Mouriani have vivid memories of the ekmetaleysi, exploitation, that lasted until the interwar period. To illustrate their sufferings, Mouriani refer to their depen- dence for work on the commercial bosses, who dominated the local society as well as the process of indebtedness. During this late Ottoman period, money ‘came to be invested with semantic properties that madé ifthe core symbol of domination and hierarchical exploitati = After unification, the local political scene altered dramatically as a result of the ‘economic decline of the commercial landlords and their replacement by agents of the Greek state. The state gradually assumed a number of key economic roles and provided a new form of economic organization and dependence through cooper- atives. Despite the integrative intentions of the state, during the interwar and post- A Contest with Money 161 ‘war period, economic dependence came to be part and parcel of process of poit- ical marginalization from the state. The experience of economic decline, which was shared by the elite and by poor peasants alike, fed ¢ strong resentment of po- litical marginalization. Resentment gradually turned into a politics-of protest against the state, These developments shaped an idiosyncratic “peasant commu- nism,” one that i often distinguished by an inter-class alliance ofthe economically declining and politically alienated elite with the mass of peasant laborers All this resulted in'a paradoxical situation after 1974, when democracy was re- stored shortly before my fieldwork. No doubt the debt situation probably intensi- fied, but the political conditions, in the context of which economic dependence ‘was being resisted, improved. The broadening of the political arena in the course of democratization reached its climax with the coming to power of the Socialists in 1981. This improved the organizational conditions under which the politics of antistate protest were conducted. However, at the same time state controlled co- ‘operatives and banks assumed a greater control of the local agricultural economy thiough loans and price controls. Now the debt situation became more overtly political, as it encapsulated and could be made to stan¢ for the problematic rela- tionship between the localities and the state. The potential for conflict was in- creased by the fact that even though economic dependence increased in many re- spects, money was becoming cheaper: The price of labor was increasing at a ¢greater rate than the price of land, and alternative occupations emerged. Accord- ingly, debt could be addressed more readily. In all these respects, then, this was a transitional period. ‘The Coffee House and the Capitalist Order: Reciprocities, Money, and the Self In Mouria, gambling takes place exclusively in the cofiee house where the main activity is drinking, And this physical setting offers an immediate clue as to its na- ‘ure and significance. Despite the fact that, as we shall see, gambling is technically ‘disassociated from drinking, itis informed by the sameset of values, In the Greek coffee house, drinks are often treated as gilts, the exchange of which is governed by a quasi-rtual code called kerasma, “treating toa driak.” Kerasma bas a tripar- tite structure of giving, receiving, and reciprocating; these acts are accompanied by a set of more or less formalized greetings. The exchange of primarily coffee or raki, a strong alcoholic drink, underlies all major forms of socialty in the coffee house: casual commensality, the more stable dyadic ties of emotional friendship, or the circle of associates who drink together. In one way or another, kerasina bases all forms of coffee house sociality on reciprocity (Papataxiarchis 1992) and. in so doing suggests alternative cultural understandings of the self, compared to those associated with the world outside the coffee house. Coffe house reciprocities can be divided into two caxegories. On the one hand is the interested give-and-take, often based on kinship or other economic or po- 162 Evthymios Papaaziarchis litical ties, and on the other hand is the disinterested sharing based on a notion of natural sameness among men. Interested reciprocity focuses on the mutual ex- change of drinks, usually coffee or other nonalcoholic beverages, and here the generous offering of drinks is unashamedly combined with acts of remuneration. This interested reciprocity, which I cal “exchange proper” corresponds to rela- tions that have a temporal content, that is, relations that are extended through clearly registered acts of give-and-take in time. In such exchanges, I see a self emerge that is governed by symferon (self-interest), an interested self, defined in relation to “external” factors of identity, such as one’s domestic/marital situation, ‘occupation, or economic and political status. Since these external factors always vary in some degree, “exchange proper” goes together with an identity premised ‘on socioeconomic, political, or other kinds of difference: The alliance of different qualities allows for “productive” investment. Disinterested reciprocity, on the other hand, corresponds to relations of emo- tional friendship that are independent of kinship, economic, or political alle- glances (Papataxiarchis 1991), As an alternative to the household domain, such friendships capture the festive spirit of the coffee house, in which freedom and performative autonomy can be achieved. As reciprocity comes to be governed by disinterestedness, it fades away and turns into a form of sharing reminiscent of Huaorani sharing practices described in this volume by Laura Rival (and see ‘Woodburn 1998). This transcendence of interest is ideally achieved in a parea, a circle of emotional friends who stop applying the code of kerasma and share drinks as “free gifts” In this context sharing brings forward a self governed by efi, a disinterested self efi refers to_an.emotional state of joy-and-relaxation, depicted in images of lightness. It is achieved when the heat, the assumed center of emotion, is freed “From the worries and concerns of this world. It further connotes a rationality that oes not rest on reason but on sentiment. Actions that appear unreasonable from, the viewpoint of economic or political calculation and self interest may be fully comprehensible in terms of the actors’ emotional preferences, “making kefi” (Pa- pataxiarchis 1994)-Kefs thought to be an exclusv property and sug- gests an identity premised ona fen men. Further, in the thetoric of the coffee house kefi and symiferon are juxtaposed, as two opposed forces that split the self and constitute alternative and mutually exclusive princi- ples of action. In actual practice, however, they are combined to make alternative strategies through which the achievement of autonomy is pursued. One of these strategies involves a “fundamentalist” interpretation of kei. It is an oppositional mode! that dynamically juxtaposes “joy” to “interest” thus insist- ing on the resistant qualities of kefi. This romantic model idealizes “true” agency as.a theory of a self “made” in performance. Performance is conceived as a form of “self making” (ftiachnomai), the self being both subject and object of “mak- ing,” yet always in close reference to another self. Tis strategy seems to be linked to the process of symbolic inversion of margin into center and of dependence A Contest with Money 163 into autonomy, as it describes a self governed entirely from “within” Association | and identification with others inthis strategy is based on a sameness between self and other that is achieved through the performative transcendence of all external (je, class, marital, party, politica, et.) difference. This strategy is particularly popular among the many bachelors and the poor of Mouria. The other strategy, I call kefi “realism.” Instead of juxtaposing “joy” to “inter- est” in a fundamentalist fashion, here “joy”is turned into “interest” thus subordi- nating symferon to efi and mixing the two. Agency in this model has two aspects, “internal” and “external, “performative” and “instrumental” In this respect it can be associated both with resistance and accommodation. Keji “realism” deals with the hierarchical and exploitative environment in which some people try to change the balance of forces in favor of the cosmological camp of kefi. Because space is allowed for symferon, this “realistic” strategy has a dilogic quality. The juxtaposition of “emotion” and “interest” is in time resolved in favor of a com-/ promise between the opposed forces. ‘The “fundamentalist” ideology ofthe disinterested self refers to a paradise lost, ‘ world without money, dependent labor, or social hierarchy, a world built on al- legedly “natural” similarity among men—the only safe basis of social equality. And it promises, as a minimum, a temporary yet instant salvation from the evils of living in this world of antagonism and material gain, a solution that can be- come more permanent if itis repeated regularly and consistently in the coffee house.’ In actual practice, however, this soteriology works not as effective libera~ tion but as an interpretative framework: It provides the cultural materials to con- struct alternatives to the evils of capitalism. And money is one of the core sym- bols of capitalist domination that is subjected to conceptual re-elaboration. ‘Mouriani distinguish various categories and subcategories of money. They dis- tinguish, for example, between “traditional” and “modern” money, “Traditional” ‘money, usually in the form of old, silver coins—out of circulation—is morally neutral and used for traditional, ritual purposes and not as means of payment and exchange, “Modern” money,-on the other hand—the main means of ex- change, payment, and calculation in the present-day world of commercial ex- change, borrowing, and wage labor—appears to be a negative moral and sym- bolic force. Men_in the coffee house share the general view that mofiey—especially in its paper form, a mietrita, cash-—is sromiko, filthy, stink ing, and has no “value.” This image is captured in the widdly held idea that one needs to wash one’s hands after money has been touched. This strong antipathy towards: ems to be more marked among men ‘who rely on wage labor or depend s from the bank and who are more ex- posed to money. In their perspective money is personified; it takes the form of! ‘mamonas, a spirit that appears to upset the correct order of things. According to ‘one of the big gamblers of Mouria, in this modern era “micmmon has mastered them all” Under “his” influence, men allegedly surrender to the dictates of self interest and adopt attitudes of saving, accumulation, ané profit. They prefer 164 Evthymios Papataxiarchis money-yielding-work rather than money-consuming-leisure, and they pay less respect to the values of education and pleasure with friends. Moreover, in pursu- ing self-interest men are enslaved to the forces that promote selfishness, comp: tiveness, and divisiveness in the male world. From this point of view, money bur- dens the heart; all it does is foster worry, anxiety, and misery, while suppressing the joy and lightness of eff. In Mouria, households rely on money for their daily reproduction. Yet men’s strong antipathy toward “evil” and “dirty” money results in a generalized but fruitless effort to avoid it. One solution is avoidance-through-substitution: Where possible, peasant producers substitute money with a traditional means of payment and exchange. Family farmers, for example, sometimes use olive oil in ‘major transactions (e.g., buying land) or in dowries. Further, when in need, they do not buy labor in the wage market but arrange reciprocal exchanges between households (called synalarna).* Another solution is avoidance-through-handing on. This strategy highlights the gendered character of resistance to money. Women are assumed to be closer to money than men. Men, therefore, pass their small daily or weekly earnings to their wives who store it and spend it in small everyday transactions, as well as in larger household oriented “investments;” for ritual and other purposes. In other words, by running the household women seem to resolve male ambiguities to- wards money. Women further extend to money their ability to transform natural, unprocessed products into “culturally” processed ones (see also Dubisch 1986). _ Women somehow “domesticate” the monetary earnings of the household just as they cook and clean. Thus they make money part of the order of the household and an essential ingredient of its present welfare and future reproduction? AA third strategy is avoidance-through-separation. On¢ feature of this strategy is the insulation of disinterested reciprocity from money, thus reaffirming the opposition of kefi to symferon and suggesting that kefi has no “material” basis in “interest” So, for example, whereas in a treating to a coffee that is related to “business” money is fully acknowledged—the treat is initiated by putting its ‘monetary equivalent on the table—in the sharing of raki in a parea, money re- mains invisible. The money that buys raki appears at the conclusion, behind the scenes and with a certain diffidence, thus contributing to the image of raki as a “Gree” gift. This suggests that separate spheres of monetary circulation, for “do- mesticated” and “raw” money, exist. Avoidance of money is, however, a strategy with limited effects since it cannot

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