Professor Michael Herzfeld from Harvard University, will present a lecture on Greece and European Union after the Brexit, on Monday 29 August 2016, at the Greek Centre, as part of the Greek History and Culture Seminars offered by the Greek Community of Melbourne.

Greece has consistently been portrayed in the media as the weak link in the European chain. Yet a closer look at the history of Greek relations with the Western Powers and with the intellectual traditions and present-day political presence of Germany offers a very different picture.

Without accepting the usual “victimisation” narrative, we can see that Greece and Germany have a long and complex entanglement that strongly colours the way Greece’s role in the current crisis of the European Union is represented, and that an analysis of this entanglement – particularly in the light of “Brexit” – suggests that this is not a “Greek” crisis but a “European” one.

Michael Herzfeld is Ernest E. Monrad Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University, and currently holds visiting appointments at the Universities of Leiden and Melbourne and at Shanghai International Studies University. An advocate of ‘engaged anthropology’, he has conducted research in Greece, Italy, and Thailand on masculinity, artisanship and social knowledge, gentrification and the impact of historical conservation, nationalism, and bureaucracy. Author of eleven books -- including Evicted from Eternity: The Restructuring of Modern Rome (2009) and Siege of the Spirits: Community and Polity in Bangkok (2016) – he has also produced two ethnographic films.

When: 7pm, Monday 29th August 2016,
Where: Mezzanine Level, The Greek Centre, 168 Lonsdale Street