Armenians of Athens and Istanbul: the Armenian diaspora and the ‘transnational’ nation

Abstract

Abstract In this article I suggest that the ethnographic study of diasporas is one feasible way of mapping and accounting for ongoing realignments of community and identity in the emerging global ecumene. Partly based on ethnographic fieldwork, two widely different sub‐communities of the Armenian diaspora are sketched and compared, those of Athens and Istanbul. I am concerned to show that what looks like multicultural hybridization, at the local level of many cities, can simultaneously and from the diapora point of view take the shape of diasporic and pan‐diasporic mobilization for national goals. The extent to which this happens has much to do with the quality of the basic diasporic myths.