Welcome to the official website of the Greek Society for Ethnology – (GSE)
Our purpose is to provide a platform for a fruitful meeting of social and other scholars in order to promote anthropological thinking and research in Greece. With our interest constantly focussed on man and on the complexity of human societies, we very much hope to contribute to the analysis and interpretation of human behaviour and activity in its different historical contexts.
We hope that this website will become a space in which communication and discourse develops. We would also like to encourage readers to initiate contact with us and to send us their thoughts and views on matters relating to the issues raised here.
On behalf of the Council of the Society
The President
Eleftherios P. Alexakis
Objectives
OBJECTIVES, ORIENTATIONS, MEMBERSHIP
A. Objectives – Membership of the Greek Society for Ethnology.
1. In accordance with the article 3, paragraph 1 of the GSE Charter, the Greek Society for Ethnology promotes the study of Ethnological and Anthropological Sciences and any other science related to them. Thus it aims to study in scholarly fashion phenomena, the social, economic and cultural facts and events that shape and create a person’s culture as a member of society and of broader groups, such as ethnic groups and nations. Such study includes subjects such ethnology, social and cultural anthropology. It also comprehends ethnohistory, historical anthropology, the history of mentalities, ethnolinguistics, anthropological folklore, cultural ecology and physical anthropology, with an emphasis on sociobiology and human classification.
2. Ethnology, combined with Anthropology, is, in the view of the GSE, a discipline that belongs both to the humanities and to the social sciences. It is a discipline that mirrors the deep interest of man in understanding himself in the present and over time. One way of achieving this understanding is to aquire anthropological and ethnological knowledge, which offers an analysis and explanation of human behaviour and activity in terms of the questions that each era poses. Ethnology, therefore, is not so much a static, academic occupation as an especially dynamic discipline that operates from the perspectives of time, and of social and ideological space.
The GSE applies a holistic perspective to understanding Ethnology: it views the study and interpretation of different aspects of culture and society and the teaching and popularizing of it as elements of an uninterrupted whole, the parts of which must nevertheless communicate freely and creatively. The Society believes in a systematic Ethnological and Anthropological discipline which overrides academic boundaries and extends to social space, thus dealing with everyday and global issues. The ultimate purpose of this discipline is to create a better understanding of various cultures, thus bringing peoples of the earth closer to each other.
