Lecture + Documentary Screening

Untangling the Culture of Agricultural Production in Pelion: The Historical Archive of the Zagora Agricultural Cooperative (1916–2016) as a Field for Documenting and Reconstructing Mountain Space
Alexandros Kapaniaris
Thursday 30.4, 11:00

This presentation explores the culture of agricultural production in Pelion through a multilayered reading of the historical archive of the Zagora Agricultural Cooperative (1916–2016), approaching it as a dynamic field for documenting and reconstructing mountain space. Through administrative documents, accounting ledgers, correspondence, and materials of everyday practice, the research highlights transformations in productive relations, forms of collective organization, and strategies for managing natural resources within a demanding geographical environment. At the same time, the analysis sheds light on the ways cooperative structures contributed to the formation of local identities and the integration of tradition into contemporary practices, offering an interpretive framework for understanding both continuity and rupture in mountainous rural landscapes.

Bio
Alexandros G. Kapaniaris holds a PhD in Digital Folklore from the Department of Preschool Education and Educational Design at the University of the Aegean. He has completed two postdoctoral research projects on archival ethnography at the Department of History & Ethnology of Democritus University of Thrace. He has taught courses on digital cultural heritage, digital applications and new technologies, and cultural management at the Universities of Piraeus, Ioannina, Western Macedonia, Democritus University of Thrace, and the Hellenic Open University.

During 2021–22, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Political Science and International Relations of the University of the Peloponnese, conducting research on archival ethnography related to migration.Since 2017, he has served as a Tutor-Counselor at the Hellenic Open University and, for the past two years, in the postgraduate program Digital Humanities, where he also coordinates the thematic unit “Digital Management of Cultural Heritage (ΨΑΕ60).

”From 2014 to 2021, he was the scientific coordinator of the project marking the 100 years of continuous operation of the Zagora Agricultural Cooperative, documenting the organization’s memory and history under the title “A Century of Cooperative Tradition and Struggle.” From 2018 to 2023, he was also the scientific coordinator of the centennial project for the Nea Anchialos Agricultural Winemaking Cooperative “DIMITRA,” documenting the organization’s memory and history under the title “From Anchialos of Eastern Rumelia to Nea Anchialos of Magnesia: Memories of Refuge and Histories of Cooperation.”

In 2014, for his work “The Mayides of Makrinitsa,” in 2018 for “Digital Folklore and Education,” and in 2019 for the two-volume work “Zagora Agricultural Cooperative: A Century of Cooperative Tradition and Struggle – History, Cooperative Values, and the Culture of Agricultural Production,” he was awarded the “Lysimachos Kaftantzoglou Prize” by the School of Philosophy of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens.

Within the framework of the course PELION CHŌRA: Dissecting and Reweaving a Mountain
By The Observatory of the Countryside
Tutor: Metaxia Markaki

For online attendance contact  memarkaki@uth.gr