Christos Varvantakis

Talking politics in everyday family lives

ABSTRACT How do children encounter and relate to public life? Drawing on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2016 for the ERC-funded Connectors Study on the relationship between childhood and public life, this paper explores how children encounter public life in their everyday family environments. Using the instance of political talk as a practice through which public life is encountered in the home, the data presented fill important gaps in knowledge about the lived experience of political talk of younger children. Working with three family histories where political talk was reported by parents to be a practice encountered in their own childhoods and one which they continued in the present amongst themselves as a couple/parents, we make two arguments: that children’s political talk, where it occurs, is idiomatic and performative; and that what is transmitted across generations is the practice of talking politics. Drawing on theories of everyday life developed by Michel de Certeau and others we explore the implications of these findings for the dominant social imaginaries of conversation, and for how political talk is researched.

Political activism across the life course

ABSTRACT The study of political activism has neglected people’s personal and social relationships to time. Age, life course and generation have become increasing important experiences for understanding political participation and political outcomes (e.g. Brexit), and current policies of austerity across the world are affecting people of all ages. At a time when social science is struggling to understand the rapid and unexpected changes to the current political landscape, the essay argues that the study of political activism can be enriched by engaging with the temporal dimensions of people’s everyday social experiences because it enables the discovery of political activism in mundane activities as well as in banal spaces. The authors suggest that a values-based approach that focuses on people’s relationships of concern would be a suitable way to surface contemporary political sites and experiences of activism across the life course and for different generations.

Mourning Deaths, Lamenting Lives: Grief and Transformation in Inner Maniot Laments

Abstract The funeral laments (moiroloya) of Inner Mani, a region in southern Peloponnese, are the focus of this article, in particular the gestural and transformative aspects of their liminal character. A specific case of a wake (klama) is discussed and analyzed in order to provide insight into the particular process of lamenting. Some general characteristics of lamenting in the region are reviewed and some of the basic assumptions of anthropologists concerning the role of emotional expression in death rituals are considered. Lastly, by focusing on an excerpt from a lament that was sung in the wake session under question, the article points to the gestural, mimetic and transformative qualities of the emotional performance of lamenting, suggesting thus an alternative reading of the expression of grief within the course of death ritual.