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Lurking Cold War
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01 November 2025

Lasting traces of the Cold War continue to shape the social landscape in Italy and Greece. Lurking Cold War critiques the connections between global categories and individual experiences, foregrounding Cold War resonances through materiality, imagination, speculation, and affect – in literature, bureaucracy, and the family. Introducing a theory of methexi, it explores how people and history are brought into communion, blurring the boundaries between the known and unknown, reality and imagination, form and interpretation. The result is an articulation of history that not only reveals the ongoing presence of the Cold War but shows how and why it still matters today.
“Lurking Cold War is a beautifully written exploration of the Cold War’s ongoing impact in Europe, blending archival research, ethnography, and oral history to reveal its lasting reverberations. This is the work of historically informed anthropology at its best.” • David Henig, Utrecht University
“I love how [the author] writes and conveys thoughts and ideas. It is very evocative, a-la Serres, personal at times, but to the right extent for the reader to get into the life of the text.” • Bjørn Thomassen, Roskilde University.
Stavroula Pipyrou is Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Minorities Research at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. She has conducted research on politics, governance, child displacement, nationalism and minority vulnerabilities in Italy, Greece, Brazil and Scotland. She is author of The Grecanici of Southern Italy: Governance, Violence, and Minority Politics (Pennsylvania, 2016).
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Deciphering Shadows
Chapter 1. Serendipity: The Bunker
Chapter 2. Agitation: The House
Chapter 3. Transcendence: Crossing the Curtain
Chapter 4. Literary Battles: Reading Across Categories
Chapter 5. Radical Imagination: Knowledge Through Generations
Epilogue: Methexi
References
Index