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