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Cyprus and its Places of Desire: Cultures of Displacement among Greek and Turkish Cypriot Refugees Lisa Dikomftis LB. Tauris (London and New York, 2012), xviii + 229 pp. ISBN: 978-1-84885-899-2
Lisa Dikomitis' book Cyprus and its places oí desire: Cultures oí displacement among Greek and Turkish Cypriot refugees is one of the best ethnographies written on Cyprus in recent years. As an ethnographic account of Greek and Turkish Cypriot refugees who were displaced following the 1974 war in Cyprus, it provides a fine continuation of Peter Loizos' work with refugees in Cyprus. One could argue that close to four decades after the island's de facto prtition, the refugees from both sides have moved on with their lives and recreated their sense of belonging and community in their new localities. But as Dikomitis shows this is only part of the story: the refugees are still engaged in place-making in an ongoing effort to create a sense of home away from home while, at the same time, retaining a strong sense of attachment to what they left behind.
The study is a comparative ethnography of two communities of refugees (a Greek Cypriot and a Turkish Cypriot), the Larnatsjiotes who were displaced from Larnakas tis Lapithou (an exclusively Greek Cypriot village) in 1974 and now live scattered in different parts of the south, and the Kozanlilar who were displaced at the same time from a number of neighbouring villages in Rphos and resettled in Kozan (the Turkish name for Larnakas tis Lapithou).
The book is an attempt to shed new light on a number of key questions regarding refugees, displacement and belonging: How do refugees create and recreate a sense of place through time? What is the role of borders in such processes? How do the senses of belonging that result from such processes, enhance, complicate, or potentially prevent reconciliation and peace? Though the book is clearly anthropological in its overall approach to studying the issue in question, the author draws on a diverse literature which crosses disciplinary boundaries. Having said this, the book is theoretically informed yet accessible, which likely will increase its appeal among a non-academic audience.
The fieldwork for the study extended over a period of six years and coincided with the opening of the...