In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Granada was a kingdom of silk. Silk work formed the basis of the Granadan economy, determined Granada's place in Mediterranean trade networks, and determined the rhythms of daily life for people in Granada's cities and its countryside. Granadan women dominated silk cultivation and spinning. When the Christians conquered the kingdom in 1491 and ended centuries of Islamic rule, Granada's Morisco population continued to make silk despite forced conversion, revolt, excessive taxation, and Inquisition until finally the silk industry collapsed when the Moriscos were expelled in 1570. The continuity through change in the kingdom's silk industry both mirrors religious and cultural change and differs from it in important ways. The silk industry reveals the ways that Moriscos resisted and cooperated with Spanish officials as their identity and culture was increasingly under threat in the sixteenth century. / text

Zugl.: Hamburg, Univ., Diss., 2008 / Literaturverz. S. 455 - 495

Lifestyle migrants from the affluent North move to the Mediterranean region intensively from the 80's. Lifestyle migration to Spain takes different forms: here we meet rich yacht owners in Marbella, retired people in the housing complexes in Almuñecar, or surfers in Tarifa. This work focused on people, who chose their new place in the region of La Alpujarra. They live in the remote houses called cortijos, which gave name to their inhabitants - cortijeros. Their lifestyles are the subject of this work, together with more general strategies practiced in lifestyle migration, the skills needed in such a move, and values they pursue. Ten years of research enabled to get together both, opinions and plans of the newcomers in the region, and their activities, stories, and imprints in the real world. I try to present different perspectives: the lens of lifestyle migration, counter-urbanization, material culture anthropology, history, positive psychology. At the end, I propose to think a positive anthropology that would focus on studying such practices that seemed to work towards understanding "the good life"; that work towards both individual well-being, and creating social structures considerate to humans and the environment.

Lifestyle migrants from the affluent North move to the Mediterranean region intensively from the 80's. Lifestyle migration to Spain takes different forms: here we meet rich yacht owners in Marbella, retired people in the housing complexes in Almuñecar, or surfers in Tarifa. This work focused on people, who chose their new place in the region of La Alpujarra. They live in the remote houses called cortijos, which gave name to their inhabitants - cortijeros. Their lifestyles are the subject of this work, together with more general strategies practiced in lifestyle migration, the skills needed in such a move, and values they pursue. Ten years of research enabled to get together both, opinions and plans of the newcomers in the region, and their activities, stories, and imprints in the real world. I try to present different perspectives: the lens of lifestyle migration, counter-urbanization, material culture anthropology, history, positive psychology. At the end, I propose to think a positive anthropology that would focus on studying such practices that seemed to work towards understanding "the good life"; that work towards both individual well-being, and creating social structures considerate to humans and the environment.