Sphakia: changing human geographies Outline Scales Demography Economy Culture and Identity...
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Transcript of Sphakia: changing human geographies Outline Scales Demography Economy Culture and Identity...
Sphakia: changing human geographies
Outline
• Scales
• Demography
• Economy
• Culture and Identity
• Representation
Environmental relations in Sphakia
• Aims– How has the people-environment relationship
changed in Sphakia as a result of historic changes in the mode of production
Environmental relations in Sphakia
– 1. Research the nature of the Sphakiote landscape
– 2. View photographic evidence of different environmental zones
– 3. What kinds of settlement have been associated with these zones over time and how are the cultural and physical landscapes linked?
– 4. Explain these changes over time
Temporal scales?Prehistoric Neolithic (up to 2600BC)
Hellenistic Minoan and Mycenaean (2600-1100BC)
Iron Age and Ancient Greek (1100-67BC)
Greco-Roman (67BC-330 AD)
Byzantine First Byzantine (330-824)
Arab (824-961)
Second Byzantine (961-1204)
Venetian (1204-1669)
Turkish (1669-1897)
Modern Autonomous (1897-1913)
Part of Greece (1913-
EU full member (1986-
Spatial Scales?Global
EU
Greece
Crete
West Crete
Chania ‘nomos’ (municipality)
Sphakia ‘eparchy’ (prefecture)
Village
Street
House
Demography
Changing demography
– Problems of censuses• Twentieth century massaging of figures eg 1981
census suggests 3615 - Damer (1989) suggests should be ca 2600.
– Pre 20th century population crashes in response to disease and wars
• e.g 1821-28 crash: plague after anti-Turkish revolt– 1821 12000 !– 1828 2374
Changing demography
– Maximum 20th century rural population 1950 ca 5 000
– Post war drift to cities especially Heraklion• rural depopulation
• abandoned villages
• growth of tourist economy (esp. North Coast)
• seasonal increases for tourist trade
Sphakia prefecture: demography 1991 census
Patsianos Anopolis
306 393
Skaloti Askifou
165 414
Agia Roumeli Asfendos
36 251
Agios Ionnis Imbros
53 Total 2182 178
Chora Sfakion
366 All defined as ‘mountainous
Economy
Economy
• Traditionally subsistent pastoral peasant economy
Fishing Transhumant sheep herding
The transhumant economy
Sheep + goats = milk + cheese
Upland summer pastures
Winter lowland pastures
Economic landscapesTraditional olive cultivation
Stones cleared from Anopolis pasture
Arable limitedin extent to upland plains eg Anopolis
Settlement patterns
Settlements mainly hamlets,
many now abandoned e.g Aradena
Exceptions coastal
fishing villages e.g.
Loutro
Hora Sfakion
Settlement patterns and landscape
• Settlement limited, population low
Yet
Rich cultural landscapes, wide diversity of human impact over long time period
Changing focus and location of settlement
Changing economic landscapes
• Landscape of revolution: emphasis on mountains
• Landscape of pastoralism: emphasis upon grazing, settlement dispersed, determined by water sources and predominantly inland
• Landscape of tourism: villages, coastal
The tourist economy
• Picturesque notions of the primitive
Loutro 1837
Tourism begins to impact• The charter flight-led revolution
Loutro 1978
Sphakia very different from North coast
• Elite minority ‘unspoilt’ resorts, independent tourism
Loutro 2001
Scales of impact
• 250 000 visit Samaria gorge every year
• Coach to Omalas, walk down gorge, boat to Chora Sphakion, coach to resort. Regulated eco-tourism? Time scales?
• Should Loutro have a road?
Tourist economy• Substituting a service sector transhumance
for a primary production transhumance?– Winter ‘owner’ migration back to Chania? – Temporary summer labour
Loutro in November
Economy as myth?
• Sphakia as uneasy mixture of tradition and tourism?
The local and the global?
The old and the new?
The shepherd and the
businessman?
– To what extent are these simplifications ‘contemporary myths’
– Urry (1993) The tourist gaze
Culture and identity
The Sfakiot identity• ‘Commonsense’ notion in
1866 and still?– fierce brave warrior spirit
(polikári)
– cunning
– rugged individualists: contempt for the state
– feuding + sheep-stealing
– christian and family oriented
– warmly hospitable
– proud but friendly
The Sfakiot: identity: making of a pre-modern myth
1. Physical environment– Lefva Ori as one of Europe’s last great
wildernesses– Karst landscape– Gorges– Waterless– Largely trackless
The Sfakiot: identity: making of a pre-modern myth
2. Access only recent: physically and socially remote
The Sfakiot: identity: making of a pre-modern myth
3. Sources of legend: traveller’s tales– Pashley (Pro-Greek academic positive)– Spratt (Pro-Turk navel officer negative)
• Both used analogy with Scots and presented Sphakiot’s and Sphakia in positive light for their own political reasons
The Sfakiot: identity: making of a pre-modern myth
4. Sphakia as fortress: repelling invaders?– Venetians– Turks– German’s– Tourists?
Long history of successful resistance to invaders: guerrilla tradition
The Sfakiot: identity: making of a pre-modern myth
5. The 19th century Greek state and imperial power politics
• Portrayal for propaganda reasons of Turkish atrocities against Sfakiots as heroic struggle
• The ‘Great Game’ in the Eastern Mediterranean: 19th century power politics of Britain, France and Russia
• Spying and dirty tricks to advance imperial projects
The Sfakiot: identity: making of a pre-modern myth
• 6. Sphakiots as ‘other’– from other Greeks– from other Cretans– unique role of 19th century history in the
process of difference– Sphakia as peripheral, marginal to Europe,
front line against the orient
The Sfakiot: identity: making of a pre-modern myth
• Are the noble savages of the mountain peasantry being wiped out by economic progress?
Change
• Tourist behaviour confronting gender and social norms– Nude and topless bathing– Music– Differing attitudes to drinking (Damer 1988)
Change
• Economic liberalization– jobs in tourist industry– EU investment in infrastructure: e.g. roads– EU support for mechanized agriculture– pull of the urban
Change
• Social change– Equality legislation– Jobs outside of traditional sector bringing social
change– Decline of traditional values– Abandoned churches– Roads into the wilderness
Representations
• Medium, genre, intent and place
• Semiotic and hermeneutic approaches
Representation
• Landscape– Cultural: figures in landscape
– Natural
• Monuments– Churches
– Houses
– War memorials
Representation• Photographs
– Landscape, people, abstract
– Web
– Postcards
– ‘Snap’, science, or art?
Representation
• Written word– Tourist guides
– Travellers’ tales
– Novels
– Newspapers
Representation• Iconography
– Restaurant signs, menus, village names, road signs, language
Representation
• Mapping
• Aims
– How has the people-environment relationship changed in Sphakia as a result of historic changes in the mode of production
Environmental relations in Sphakia
Environmental relations in Sphakia
– 1. Research the nature of the Sphakiote landscape
– 2. View photographic evidence of different environmental zones
– 3. What kinds of settlement have been associated with these zones over time and how are the cultural and physical landscapes linked?
– 4. Explain these changes over time
Environmental zones in Sphakia
• Submit a group write-up addressing these issues. Consult the following sources:– Sphakia project video– Sphakia Project home page environmental
zones section– Rackham and Moody (1996) chapters 3 and 4.– Nixon et al 1988, 1989 and 1990 available
from Sphakia home page publications links