“foreign chickens” and other outsiders: gender and community in Greece

Anthropological discussions of gender in the Mediterranean have tended to focus on two related issues: the control of female sexuality, particularly in terms of concepts of “honor and shame,” and women's power and its relationship to the public and private spheres of community life. This article seeks to move beyond these issues to a broader examination of gender ideology. It suggests that gender needs to be seen in a shifting context of boundaries, representations, and conflicts at the domestic, communal, and even national level. Using data from a Greek village, the article explores women's positions as representations of both “inside” and “outside” and relates such representations to ongoing discourses about personal, village, and national identities. [ gender, women's roles, Greece, the Mediterranean, social boundaries ]