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Today cultures, identities, and communities, imagined or otherwise, are being examined as the processes of globalization erode national boundaries, integrating and connecting communities, organizations, and people in new space-time combinations. Although the concept of" identity" is not altogether new, issues of identity, ethnicity, ethnic groups, and the resurgence of nationalism are being vigorously debated in many fields of social theory, and in particular, anthropology. There is undoubtedly today an overarching concern with anthropological theories of" ethnicity" and the" identity" of Third World peoples, as well as the" identity" of ethnic minorities entrenched in large Western nation states.

In some cases it involves a past defined by outsiders and used to forge an identity in the present, as in the Greek case. 3 In others it denies a past defined by outsiders, and uses a present cultural identity to forge a viable past …