This book gathers several studies that were published for the first time in French between 1971 and 1985, which collectively converge on a common research subject: the cultural dimensions (and their treatment by the currently dominant research) of the tradition of resistance - rebellion of the popular classes in both rural and urban areas.

This tradition, although generally inherent in popular behavior and ideology (for pre-capitalist societies, we can say that it constitutes a sociological "constant" of popular culture), manifests itself in a particularly dynamic and direct way within certain distinct social groups, those that constitute what is referred to in our country as the paracommunal phenomenon.

The klephtic bodies until the establishment of the Greek state, social banditry until the early years of our century, the rebetes and the world of the Greek Karagiozis until the first post-war decade represent the individual facets of this phenomenon, which, in its essence, is unified and is nothing more than an expression - for each of these three historical periods - of the persistent crisis of correspondence existing between the institutional and social data of the modern Greek formation.

[Excerpt from the text on the back cover of the edition]