Strange gender practices in the area of Agios Panteleimonas, Attiki, and ethnographic dead ends

Abstract

Using the tools of postcolonial and anticolonial critique and Gender Studies, this article discusses an incomplete fieldwork project. The paper discusses the difficulties of a fieldwork on Arab masculinities in the center of Athens, the neighborhood of Agios Panteleimonas. On the one hand, lacking a common language, financial support from the academia, wrong initial perception of shared cultural norms and sexual difference led fieldwork to an impasse on a practical and symbolic level.

On the other hand, the above deficiencies differentiated the initial research questions on masculinities. The focus was moved towards the ways the Greek population perceives, understands and culturally translates the eastern/ Muslim population of the city center. Subsequently, this article also discusses the gender practices of both Arab men and women immigrants and refugees of Agios Panteleimonas and their otherness strangeness in the eyes of Greek inhabitants.