Greek Whiskey: The Localization of a Global Commodity

In many contexts of Greek social life, Scotch whisky has coincidentally become a symbol of “Greekness,” national identity, modernity, and the middle class. This ethnographic study follows the social life of Scotch in Greece through three distinct trajectories in time and space in order to investigate how the meanings of the beverage are projected, negotiated, and acquired by various different networks. By examining the mediascapes of the Greek cultural industry, the Athenian nightlife and entertainment, and the North Aegean drinking habits, the study illustrates how Scotch became associated with modernity, popular music and culture, a lavish style, and an antidomestic masculine mentality.

Tryfon Bampilis has taught cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and the University of Bayreuth, and he has served as scientific advisor of the Netherlands Institute in Athens (NIA). He is coeditor of Social Matter(s): Recent Approaches to Materiality (2013, in press) and is currently researching the rise of the far right in Greece in relation to the economic crisis, diversity, and immigration as a visiting fellow of the University of Oxford.