Tourist, local, or other?: Greek Canadian women and the heritage fling in Greece

Abstract

This article examines the romantic and sexual encounters between Greek men and Greek Canadian women vacationing in Greece and addresses how constructions of Greek Canadian female sexuality are related to foreign and local Greek conceptions of femininity during these ‘holiday flings’. Because of their Greek ancestry, Mediterranean ‘looks’, and familiarity with language and culture, Greek Canadian women exhibit ambiguous identities that uphold and cross boundaries between outsiders and insiders. Drawing on long-term fieldwork, I explore the conceptualizations of ancestral and national identity underpinning Greek women's erotic desires for Greek man who embody ethnic authenticity to them. Yet, Greek men thwart these desires when they subvert Canadian women's economic power through challenging their cultural literacy (such as a lack in language skills, etiquette, or sexual knowledge). This article addresses the question of how diasporic women's heterosexuality subjectivities – bound up with hybrid ethnic and national affiliations – take on different meanings across locales and times where transnational sex and romance are everyday occurrences.

¿Turista, local u otro?: mujeres griegas canadienses y romance de verano en Grecia

Este artículo analiza los encuentros románticos y sexuales entre hombres griegos y mujeres helenocanadienses de vacaciones en Grecia y aborda cómo las construcciones de la sexualidad de la mujer helenocanadiense están relacionadas con las concepciones extranjeras y locales griegas de la feminidad durante estas “aventuras de vacaciones”. Debido a su ascendencia griega, su “aspecto” mediterráneo y la familiaridad con el idioma y la cultura, las mujeres helenocanadienses exhiben identidades ambiguas que sostienen y cruzan límites entre ser de afuera y de adentro. Basándome en trabajo de campo extenso, exploro las conceptualizaciones de la identidad ancestral y nacional apuntalando los deseos eróticos de las mujeres griegas para los hombres griegos que para ellos encarnan la autenticidad griega. Sin embargo, los hombres griegos frustran estos deseos cuando subvierten el poder económico de las mujeres canadienses desafiando su alfabetización cultural (como su falta de manejo de la lengua, la etiqueta, el conocimiento sexual). Este artículo aborda la cuestión de cómo las subjetividades heterosexuales de las mujeres de la diáspora – ligadas a afiliaciones híbridas étnicas y nacionales – toman diferentes significados en distintos lugares y tiempos donde el sexo y el romance transnacionales son sucesos cotidianos.

观光客、本地人或其他？希腊裔加拿大女性与希腊的夏日罗曼史

本文检视希腊男性与在希腊渡假的希腊裔加拿大女性之间，罗曼蒂克以及性的邂逅，并处理希腊裔加拿大女性的性慾建构，如何有关于这些“纵情假期”中，外国及希腊在地对女性气质的概念化。希腊裔加拿大女性，因其希腊的血统、地中海人的“外貌”，以及对语言和文化的熟稔，使其展现出同时维护并跨越外人与内人边界的模煳身份认同。我透过长期的田野工作，探讨血统和国族认同的概念化，作为希腊女性欲求希腊男性的情慾基础，而这些希腊男性，对她们而言则体现了族裔的本真性。但当希腊男性藉由挑战加拿大女性的文化知识（例如缺乏语言技巧、礼节或性知识），从而颠覆了她们的经济能力时，便挫伤了这些女性的慾望。本文处理离散女性的异性恋主体性——与溷杂的族裔及国族联繫紧密相关——如何在跨国性爱与罗曼史作为日常生活事件的不同地点及时间中，获致不同的意义。

Keywords:

• tourism
• Greek Canadians
• Greece
• femininity
• ethnicity
• homeland
• heterosexuality

Palabras claves:

• turismo
• helenocanadienses
• Grecia
• feminidad
• etnicidad
• tierra nativa
• heterosexualidad

关键词::

• 观光
• 希腊裔加拿大人
• 希腊
• 女性特质
• 族裔
• 故乡
• 异性恋

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the women and men who shared their stories with me throughout my field work experiences, Susan Frohlick for her persistence in seeing this themed issue to publication, and the anonymous reviewers for their critical insights. This research was in part supported by a J. William Fulbright Dissertation Scholarship to Canada (2000–2001).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

^1. The initial research focused on transnational marriages among 24 Greek Canadian women and a demographic survey of over 300 community members. I conducted in-depth interviews with 58 other individuals including family members and friends of the 24 core informants. The data for this article come largely from those supplemental interviews and participant observation conducted over several field visits to Greece and Calgary from 2000 to 2008. Greek Canadian female participants were interviewed in depth at least once and, when possible, observed in or near the locations of their romances (beach, bar, village, or city). The Greek male participants were interviewed informally during observation sessions or at their place of employment (such as bars and beach taverns).

^2. For another account of second-generation return (among Greek Americans), please refer Christou (2006).

^3. The names of informants are aliases.

^4. See Jacobs' work Jacobs (2010) on tourism in Egypt for another perspective on nostalgia and landscapes.

^5. Explicitly sexual text messages sent by cell phone.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Anastasia Panagakos

Anastasia Panagakos is a Professor of Anthropology at Cosumnes River College in Sacramento, California. She has conducted extensive research on the Greek diaspora in Canada and the United States on topics of authenticity, gender, ethnicity, and homeland relations. Her dissertation research explored the nostalgic longings of second-generation Greek Canadian women and their desires to live in Greece and marry a Greek husband. Subsequent work focused on the creation of a global Greek diaspora through information and communication technologies. Her current ethnographic research addresses Greek youth identity in California and how it is evolving through the ministry programs of the Greek Orthodox Church's folk dance program.