The Body Impolitic

"The relationship between masters and artisans provides the ethnographic core of The Body Impolitic, but Herzfeld's latest book is much more than a micro-study of interpersonal relations within the context of apprenticeship in a provincial backwater. It is also, as its subtitle indicates, a study of globalization, currently the social sciences' favorite topic. Like a good number of other anthropologists, however, Herzfeld has for long held that neither the processes of globalization, nor the academic attention currently paid them, should entail an abandonment of anthropology's commitment to the intimate study of highly localized phenomena. . . . That very celebration of tradition is also what marginalizes Greece as a nation, by placing it outside the mainstream of "modernity" represented by northern Europe, and aspired to by Greece's hegemonic class. On the international stage, such celebration thus entails condescension. Locally, the pattern is repeated."

"Michael Herzfeld's riffs on the embodiment of the artisan persona remind me of Charlie Parker on the saxophone, developing a series of motifs with intricate variations in a richly textured and innovative interpretation. Time and time again Herzfeld touches briefly on the many diverse artisan industries in the Cretan town of Rethemnos to reinforce impressions of shared features. Prevailing attitudes and values emerge from elaborations of incidents that epitomize the demeanor of artisans in their confining realm of interaction: the workshop. . . . Herzfeld's book is a benchmark for ethnographic research on a topic that will not soon become obsolete. His contribution will be welcomed as a model for studies linking local cultural persistence to ubiquitous forces of change, especially in instances of growing tourist markets. This case of cultural reproduction in Crete, playing off the tensions between the celebration of a heritage (placing artisans on a 'pedestal') and denigration of nonprogressive sectors (tying them to a 'hitching post'), invites comparisons with other more or less similar settings."

Named "Outstanding Academic Title" by Choice

"The product of more than twenty years reflection on the structural conditions of national culture in Greece, the ethnography is a compelling study of the origins of a manifest and troubling dis-ease with the artisan's station in life. . . . Hertzfield's contribution to a modern theory of value . . . thoiughtfully opens up a discussion of work, culture, modernity, and domination of broad significance to contemporary anthropology.

Acknowledgments
Note on Transliteration
1. The Pedestal and the Tethering Post
2. Schooling the Body
3. Hostility and Cooperation
4. Engendered States
5. Boredom and Stealth
6. Associative States
7. Artisans in the State and the Nation
8. Embodying Value
Notes
Bibliography
Index