Iron in the Soul: Displacement, Livelihood and Health in Cyprus

In his vivid, lively account of how Greek Cypriot villagers coped with a thirty-year displacement, Peter Loïzos follows a group of people whom he encountered as prosperous farmers in 1968, yet found as disoriented refugees when revisiting in 1975. By providing a forty year in-depth perspective unusual in the social sciences, this study yields unconventional insights into the deeper meanings of displacement. It focuses on reconstruction of livelihoods, conservation of family, community, social capital, health (both physical and mental), religious and political perceptions. The author argues for a closer collaboration between anthropology and the life sciences, particularly medicine and social epidemiology, but suggests that qualitative life-history data have an important role to play in the understanding of how people cope with collective stress.

Peter Loizos (1937-2012), was Professor Emeritus in Anthropology, London School of Economics. He was born in London, studied at Cambridge, Harvard and L.S.E., where he taught Social Anthropology for thirty-three years. As a photographer and documentary filmmaker, Peter Loïzos wrote a textbook on ethnographic films, and carried out development consultancies in Sudan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh for organisations including Oxfam, Save the Children and DFID. His latest work was an attempt to refine the concept of 'generation' in forced migration studies.