The subject of Vassos Argyrou's study is modernization, as reflected in the changing nature of wedding celebrations in Cyprus over two generations. He argues that modernization is not a secular, progressive process that remodels the life of a society, ironing out local differences. Rather, it is an idiom--a legitimizing discourse--in which Cypriots represent, and contest, relationships among social classes, old and young, men and women, city folk and villagers. At the same time, by involving modernization, they are submitting to foreign standards, and accepting the symbolic domination of Europe.

Vassos Argyrou lectures in social anthropology at the University of Hull. He has also taught at Intercollege in Nicosia and several universities in the US, including Indiana State University, Reed College, Holy Cross College and Colgate University. Research interests include social and cultural theory, postcolonialism, ritual and myth, southern Europe

Introduction; l. The island of Aphrodite; 2. Nationalism and the poverty of imagination; 3. The weddings of the l930s; 4. The meaning of change; 5. Distinction and symbolic class struggle; 6. Anthropology and the specter of 'monoculture'; 7. The dialectics of symbolic domination.