How Can A Woman Give Birth To One Greek And One Macedonian?

In the early 1990s the attention of the Greek and the Macedonian communities of Australia was focused on the Macedonian conflict. The most burning issues confronting the two communities were the struggle of the Republic of Macedonia to gain international recognition under its constitutional name and the parallel, but somewhat less immediate, struggle of Aegean Macedonians to gain recognition from the Greek government as an ethnic or national minority. During this time conversations among Greeks and Macedonians in Melbourne inevitably turned to questions of identity. At weddings, soccer games, village dances and picnics they argued passionately and endlessly about whether they were Greeks or Macedonians, about what makes a person Greek or Macedonian, and about how people could ever know what a person's nationality really was.

    Peter Savramis is a Macedonian, not a Greek.[17] He left his village near Florina and came to Melbourne in the early 1970s. Peter takes great delight in arguing with people in Greek, Macedonian, and English about the Macedonian question. He prides himself on being able to present his position articulately, convincingly, and without getting in a fight. George often talks about the Macedonian conflict at construction sites around the city where he works installing heating and air conditioning systems.

    One day in the fall of 1991 an Italian contractor introduced Peter to Kostas, a Greek carpenter who would be working with him on a new house.

"This is my friend Peter," the contractor said. "He's Macedonian, but he speaks Greek."

    With a look of suspicion Kostas asked Peter in heavily accented English "What kind of Macedonian are you? Are you one of those ones who makes trouble?"

"No," Peter replied. "We're just trying to protect our culture from the Greek government."

"What do you mean?" asked Kostas.

Peter suggested they speak in Greek.

"Where are you from?" asked Kostas in Greek. "Are you one of the ones who wants to take our land?"

    "Wait a minute," Peter said. "I'm a Macedonian. What land are you talking about? I'm from Macedonia, Macedonia of the Aegean."

'You speak good Greek!" said Kostas, somewhat surprised.

'Yes," said Peter. "I speak pure Greek. I learned it in school."

'You're a Greek-Macedonian," said Kostas.

"No! I'm a Macedonian." replied Peter.

Kostas was starting to get angry. "But you can't understand those Yugoslavs who want to take our land."

"When it comes to language," Peter explained, "a Macedonian from Greece and a Macedonian from Yugoslavia can understand each other perfectly. They speak the same language."

"Why does it bother you if I'm Macedonian?" asked Peter. "Are you Greek?"

'Yes."

"If I said that you weren't Greek, wouldn't you tell me to get stuffed?"

'Yes."

"It's the same for me. If you say I'm not a Macedonian, I'll tell you to go get stuffed."

"But you're a Greek-Macedonian," insisted Kostas again.

"I'm a Greek citizen," said Peter, "but I'm a Macedonian by birth. You could have an Australian passport, but by birth what are you?"

"A Greek," replied Kostas.

"It's the same with me," said Peter. "I'm Macedonian by birth. If a hundred years ago they divided up Greece, and Italy and Bulgaria and Thrkey each took a part, what would you be?"

"I'd still be a Greek," replied Kostas.

"That's right," said Peter, shaking Kostas' hand. "And I'm still a Macedonian. I am what I am, and you are what you are. If you say I'm not a Macedonian, then I'll say you're not a Greek."

    An analysis of the indigenous theories of identity that underlay arguments like this confirms the value of David Schneider's (1968, 1969 and 1984) discussion of blood and law as two of the most powerful symbols used to express the unity of a group of people who share a common identity, whether in the domain of kinship, religion, or nationality. According to Schneider, blood is regarded as a "natural substance," a "shared biogenetic material." It is a biological essence, an objective fact of nature, that is given at birth and that is often thought to constitute a permanent and unalterable aspect of a person's identity. By contrast, another aspect of a person's identity is that determined by law, by what Schneider calls "a code for conduct," that is, a specific social relationship which is dependent for its continued existence on the performance of a particular social role (1968:21-29). It is understood that this aspect of a person's identity is neither natural nor permanent, but that it can either be changed or terminated. In the conversations of immigrants from Florina to Melbourne either of these two powerful symbols may serve as a criterion for determining a person's identity.

    According to both Greek and Macedonian nationalist perspectives national identity is something that is naturally and biologically given. It is determined first and foremost by "blood" or by "birth." This biologized conception of national identity is expressed both explicitly and metaphorically. A person of Greek nationality is "Greek by birth" (Ellinas to yenos). Similarly a man from Florina who identifies himself as a Macedonian and not a Greek said "No one buys his nationality; no one chooses his mother. I inherited this nationality. It is my inheritance, the milk of my mother."[18]

    Metaphors identifying the personified national homeland as parent also support this biologized conception of national identity. Greece is often referred to Greece as the "mother fatherland," while Macedonia is often referred to both as "mother Macedonia" and as the "fatherland" Macedonian nationalists frequently use biological metaphors equating the category of national identity with the category of biological species. When people from Florina who identify as Macedonians deny the legitimacy of the identity of their relatives and fellow villagers who identify as Greeks, they use images suggesting the immutability of biological species: "Wheat is wheat, and corn is corn. You can't change one into the other. Even if you call it corn, it's still wheat.. Its nature doesn't change." As another Macedonian from Florina put it, "A maple tree is a maple tree. You can't inject oak tree into it." Macedonian nationalists often explain the incompatibility of Greeks and Macedonians by way of a proverb that also draws on the analogy between nationality and biological species. In commenting on the long history of conflict and hostility between Greeks and Macedonians, they say "sheep and goats don't mix."

    People from Florina who identify themselves as Macedonians and not Greeks argue that all Slavic-speaking people in northern Greece are "really" Macedonians and not Greeks because their "mother tongue" is Macedonian and not Greek. They contrast the "natural" environment in which they learned Macedonian - at home, in the family, speaking with their parents and grandparents - with the "artificial" environment of the educational system in which they learned Greek. "Real Greeks," they say, "don't have grandparents who speak Macedonian." They also attempt to undermine the legitimacy of the Greek national identity of people who speak Macedonian by making fun of them when they say in Macedonian "We are Greeks" (Nie sne Grci) or "We Greeks are clever" (Nie Grci sne eksipni).[19] From a Macedonian and even a Greek nationalist perspective such people may seem incongruous, their nationality suspect. From an anthropological perspective in which identity is a matter of self ascription, however, the claims to Greek national identity of people who were born in Greece but speak Macedonian and not Greek are just as legitimate as the claims to Macedonian national identity of people who earlier in their lives identified themselves as Greeks.

    The contrast between a person's "genuine" national identity, which is biologically given at birth, and a person's "artificial" national identity, which is acquired somehow later in life is conveyed by a humorous, if somewhat bitter, comment overheard by a Macedonian from Melbourne while visiting the village near Florina where he was born. A woman from southern Greece who had married a Slavic-speaking local Macedonian from the village told some men who had gathered in the village cafe that they were not "real Greeks." An old man, a local Macedonian, replied "That's right. You are a Greek with hormones. We are Greeks by injection."[20]

    While the idea that national identity is a natural, biological given is a basic tenet of both Greek and Macedonian nationalist ideologies, in arguments among people from Florina over whether they are really Greeks or Macedonians, this position is most often taken by people who identify themselves as Macedonians. People who identify themselves as Greeks, on the other hand, are much more likely to argue that national identity is determined by what Schneider has called "a code for conduct," that is, a particular relationship with the Greek state which people enter into as they are socialized into Greek society. Through this process of socialization people develop a commitment to the Greek state as well as a sense of being part of the Greek nation. From this perspective, being a part of Greek society and participating in Greek culture mean that one is a member of the Greek nation. Given the identity of the Greek state and the Greek nation, the legal relationship between a Greek citizen and the Greek state, which involves the performance of a particular social role, is equated with membership in the Greek nation. People who are Greek citizens, in other words, must have a Greek national identity; people who were raised in Greek society must be Greek.[21]

    Immigrants from Florina to Melbourne who identify themselves as Greeks frequently argue that their relatives and fellow villagers who identify as Macedonians cannot "really" be Macedonians on the grounds that there has never been a Macedonian state. When a Greek tells a Macedonian 'You can't be a Macedonian because there's no such country (kratos)," he implies that because there is no Macedonian state as a legal entity and no Macedonian citizenship as a legal relationship, there can be no Macedonian nation and no Macedonian national identity. This argument, of course, ignores the fact that nations can and do exist which have no states to serve as national homelands (the Palestinians and the Kurds are two obvious examples), as well as the fact that the Republic of Macedonia has existed as one of the republics of the former Yugoslavia with its own government, educational system, flag, and nationality since 1944. It also ignores the fact that in 1991 the Republic of Macedonia declared its existence as an independent and sovereign state. Given the identity of state and nation in Greek nationalist ideology, Greece's refusal to recognize the Republic of Macedonia as an independent state can be seen as the equivalent of refusing to recognize the existence of the Macedonians as a distinct nation.

    The Greek nationalist argument is more straightforward when it comes to denying the possibility that people from Florina, people who were born and raised in Greece, could have a Macedonian national identity. They must have a Greek national identity. A man from Florina who identified himself as Greek defended himself by saying: "I was born under Greece, I went to school under Greece, I believe Greek, and I'll never change." In an attempt to put an end to a long and frustrating discussion, another man said "We're from Greece, so we're Greek. Let's just forget it."

    More specifically people with a Greek national identity often argue that because many people from Florina who identify themselves as Macedonians have Greek, not Macedonian, names; because they attend the Greek, not the Macedonian, church; because they are literate in Greek, not Macedonian, and most importantly because they all have Greek, not Macedonian, passports; they must therefore be Greeks. Macedonians, however, refute these arguments by pointing out that many Aegean Macedonians have Greek names and are literate in Greek because of the assimilationist policies of the Greek government. They also point out that Aegean Macedonians have Greek passports because they are Greek citizens, emphasizing once again that citizenship does not determine ethnic or national identity.

    When confronted with the Greek argument that because they came to Australia on Greek passports they were therefore Greeks, many people from Florina who identify themselves as Macedonians simply say "No. We're Macedonians with Greek passports." More argumentative Macedonians often reply 'You say that we're Greeks because we were born under Greek rule. Does that mean that your grandfather was Turkish because he was born under Turkish rule?"

    The relevance of Schneider's analysis of the symbols of blood and law to the present discussion of the construction of national identity among local Macedonian immigrants from Florina is clear from the analogies often drawn between trying to determine what a persons "real" national identity is and who a person's "real" mother is. At a village picnic in Mebourne Sam, a man from a village near Florina who identifies himself as a Greek, said "My blood is Macedonian. My real mother is Macedonian. But my adoptive mother is Greece. And you can't spit in the face of your adoptive mother." Faced with a clear choice, metaphorically speaking, between a relative to whom he was related by blood and one to whom he was related by law, Sam chose to place greater emphasis on the legal relationship and to remain loyal to his adoptive mother. In this way he explained the fact that he had a Greek national identity.

    Ted, who was also from a village near Florina, but who identifies himself as a Macedonian and not a Greek, used the same metaphor, the metaphor of adoption, to explain how as an adult he had realized that he was actually a Macedonian, even though he had lived all his life as a Greek. "I felt like an adopted child who had just discovered his real parents," he said. "All my life had been a lie. I'd been a janissary.[22] I'd betrayed my own people." Ted, unlike Sam, however, chose metaphorically to privilege his relationship with his biological parents. In this way he justified his newly discovered Macedonian national identity.

    As these two examples illustrate, immigrants from Florina can decide whether they are Greeks or Macedonians either by invoking the existence of a "blood" tie or by invoking the existence of a social relationship. National identity, in this case, therefore, is a matter of choice, a matter of self-identification or self-ascription. Immigrants from Florina recognize the role of conscious choice and individual decision making in their discussions of national identity, but only to a degree. They talk about people with a Greek national identity as people who "want" or "believe in" Greece. Conversely they refer to people who have a Macedonian national identity as people who "want" or "believe in" Skopje. People who identify as Greeks or Macedonians are also described as being "on the Greek side" or on the Macedonian side;" as belonging to one "political faction" (Darataksi) or the other. This terminology suggests that whether immigrants from Florina identify themselves as Greeks or Macedonians is a matter of conscious political choice. People are Greeks or Macedonians because they choose to be Greeks or Maceddnians.

    Macedonians who are involved in the Macedonian human rights movement in Australia are the most likely to acknowledge that national identity is a matter of self-ascription. They have been influenced both by the the discourse of multiculturalism in Australia, where ethnic identity is specifically stated to be a matter of self-identification, and by the discourse of international human rights organizations such as th& United Nations or the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, where membership in a national minority is considered to be a matter of individual choice.[23] Such an approach to the issue of ethnic and national identity (as opposed to the essentialist approach so characteristic of most nationalist ideologies) clearly serves the interests of Macedonians in their struggle to gain recognition as a nation on the international scene and as an ethnic minority in Greece as well as in Australia.

    In many cases, however, the acknowledgment of the self-ascriptive nature of national identity is merely a token gesture of respect, one which is all too readily abandoned in favor of a more essentialist approach. A man involved in the Macedonian human rights movement in Melbourne talked about a fellow villager who identified himself as Greek this way: "I respect Tom for what he believes he is. He has the right to believe in something, and he believes he's Greek. But he's really a Macedonian like us." Another immigrant from Florina involved in the Macedonian human rights movement described the underlying biologically-given Macedonian national identity of a fellow villager who explicitly identified himself as Greek as existing "inside his blood, without his wanting it."

    People from Florina who identify themselves as Greeks exhibit this same tendency to contrast people's beliefs, people's assertions of what they are, on the one hand, with what they "really" are, on the other. A woman who identified herself as Greek and who taught Greek at a public elementary school in Melbourne expressed this contrast implicitly when she said: "I know Greeks from Florina who say they're not Greek." Her knowledge that they are Greeks somehow transcends in importance and legitimacy their assertions that they are not Greek. Another immigrant from Florina who identified himself as a Greek expressed the contrast this way: 'You can change your consciousness (sinidhisi), but you can't change what you really are. My son can have an Australian consciousness, but he can't be an Australian. He can feel Australian, but he can't be one.... A person who went to Skopje after the Civil War can change consciousness. Now he believes there; now he has a Slavic consciousness. But he can't be a Macedonian. He's Greek."

    Because all local Macedonians from Florina accept the fact that they share the same regional or ethnic identity, they believe that they all must also have the same national identity. People who have a Macedonian national identity believe that all local Macedonians are Macedonians, while people who have a Greek national identity believe that all local Macedonians are Greeks. Members of both groups dismiss as mistaken and illegitimate the self-ascribed identity of anyone who asserts an identity different from their own.

    Macedonians justify dismissing the self-ascribed Greek national identity of their relatives and fellow villagers by arguing that it is motivated by fear, that it is a product of the assimilationist policies practiced by the Greek government since 1913. As one Macedonian put it, "They were forced to become Greeks" (Me to zori evinan Ellines). A leader of the Macedonian human rights movement in Melbourne said that in an open society like Australia, where people can freely identify as they wish, their self-ascribed national identity will correspond with their biologically given national identity. When deliberate attempts have been made to eradicate an ethnic group, however, then people's self-ascribed national identity will not correspond with their biologically given national 

identity. In such cases people's "real" identity is determined, not by self-ascription, but by biology.

    Greeks justify dismissing the self-ascribed Macedonian national identity of people from Florina in a similar manner. They argue that it is a conscious choice which in many cases is motivated by the pressure tactics of local "Skopians" or by economic self-interest. However, a Macedonian woman from Florina who completed her university studies in Melbourne explicitly rejected the idea that her Macedonian identity was a matter of conscious choice: "The Greeks are denying my people the right to be who they are, not who they want to be. I don't choose to be Macedonian. I am Macedonian. I'm Macedonian because I was born to the family I was and in the place I was. I'm not Macedonian because of any political act of my own.' From both the Greek and the Macedonian nationalist perspectives, therefore, a 'person's self-ascribed national identity as a product of conscious choice is generally rejected in favor of a reified conception of national identity grounded in biology.

Because a person's national identity can be defined as biologically determined or as acquired through a process of socialization, and because a person's self-ascribed national identity (whether it is based on biology or socialization) can either be accepted at face value or rejected in favor of another identity based on the other principle, the question of whether the Slavic-speaking people of northern Greece are Greeks or Macedonians is ultimately contestable. People from Florina will continue to argue about blood, place of birth, language, passports, consciousness, and belief as criteria of national identity. Parents and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters will continue to disagree about what they really are.

At a village dance in Melbourne a man who identified himself as Macedonian and not Greek. told me a story about two brothers from a village near Florina. One had settled in Yugoslavia after the Civil War; the other had remained in Greece. Eventually they both came to Australia (one on a Yugoslav passport, the other on a Greek passport) where they lived together with their mother in the same house in Melbourne. They were constantly arguing with each other because one brother identified himself as Greek while the other brother identified himself as Macedonian. Finally they confronted their mother; they asked her how a woman could give birth to one Greek and one Macedonian. The narrator of the story did not tell me what the mother replied. Instead he offered his own answer to the question. "It's not possible," he said emphatically. "By blood, by birth, they're both Macedonians."

I am sure that if the narrator of the story had been a Greek I would also have been told that it was not possible for a woman to give birth to one Greek and one Macedonian, but I would have been told that both brothers were Greek. As an anthropologist, however, I offer a different answer to this question. I suggest that it Ls possible for a woman to give birth to one Greek and one Macedonian. It is possible precisely because Greeks and Macedonians are not born, they are made. National identities, in other words, are not biologically given, they are socially constructed.

It is my hope that the detailed ethnographic material presented here has demonstrated the complexity of the process of identity formation as it takes place at the individual level among local Macedonian immigrants from Florina to Melbourne. This same complexity characterizes the lives and identities of Macedonians in other parts of the world, as well as those of many other people who are members of ethnic minorities and diaspora communities in today's transnational world. These people are caught between mutually exclusive national identities. They are marginal participants in several national cultures and full participants in none, people who are struggling to construct a coherent sense of themselves from a complex, multi-layered set of identities - class, religious, regional, ethnic, and national. While these identities may coexist easily on some occasions, they conflict sharply on others, and this conflict often brings with it a great deal of uncertainty, alienation, and pain.

It is also my hope that the analysis presented here has convincingly exposed the dangers of oversimplified nationalist ideologies with their explanations of national identity in terms of some natural or spiritual essence. In addition I hope it has exposed the weaknesses of earlier anthropological approaches to the study of identity with their arguments that people are members of ethnic or national groups because they share some set of common cultural traits. Only by rejecting both these approaches are we in a position to understand the complex historical, political, social, and cultural processes by which individuals construct and negotiate the identities that give meaning to their lives.