Understanding A Displaced Community and Its Entangled Identity: Religious Rituals of Alevis in Istanbul

This paper’s main goal is to examine the nature of a religious belief and its entangled identity in an urban context from an anthropological perspective. My work’s current focus is that the ritual practices of urban immigrants are displayed in the public space, unlike the social structure and guidance provided by a local religious expert known as a dede. Since the 1950s mass migration of Alevis from rural regions to the Turkish metropolises, such as Istanbul, the Alevi identity has been transformed into a labyrinth of socio-political obstacles and has been losing its place due to the pressures of both the state power and the Sunni and Alevi institutions. They have been losing the space that their belief attached, the clan-related (ocak) community network system, the reliance on rural divine leaders, their spiritual moods and motivations, the unique means of resolving community conflicts. The paper includes a standardized ritual and music repertoire, the revision of folklorized sacred dance (semah) elements, and a critical analysis of what can be seen as the theatrical aspects of urban cem. The second part of this paper is to understand other reasons why Alevi identity has become entangled. Certain writings about Alevis and using concepts about Alevism, such as heterodox and syncretic, ongoing hate speech and discrimination waged against them, Islamophobia seen worldwide, have played a role in the entangled identity of Alevis. We used the ethnography research method, which is mostly qualitative. It involves participatory observation of cem rituals in Istanbul, and obtaining information through informal and formal interview techniques used during observations.

Grotesco Criollo

The grotesco criollo was a genre belonging to the commercialized theater of Buenos Aires in the 1920s and 1930s. The influence of the Italian grottesco of Luigi Pirandello is evident in the way characters are conceived as living with a false image of themselves. In the grotesco criollo the false image or mask is revealed when a character fails in his or her attempt to fit in with reality. Armando Discépolo is considered the creator of the genre. Other authors of grotescos include Francisco Defillipis Novoa and Juan Carlos Ghiano. The new genre was a conscious reworking of the sainete criollo, popular in the Rio de la Plata region at the beginning of the twentieth century. The sainetes were comic and melodramatic representations featuring the urban immigrants who crowded the patios of tenement buildings. The grotesco genre transferred the dramatic action to the interior of the Italian immigrant’s household. It typically mixed the comic and the tragic in a familial conflict involving failed expectations of success in modern life. Discépolo’s plays Mateo (1923) and Stéfano (1928) are most representative of the genre, which has influenced Argentine theater through the years, from avant-garde author Roberto Arlt to more recent playwrights such as Roberto Cossa and Griselda Gambaro.

Persuading the “Male Preserve”

This chapter focuses on men, the only empowered contingent of the suffrage movement. While some men had always voiced support for woman suffrage, no sustained men's organization existed in the state until 1908. That year, Anna Howard Shaw, president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association, encouraged the founding of the Men's League for Woman Suffrage, which then served as an affiliate of the New York State Woman Suffrage Association. These elite white men, often raised or living in suffrage households, risked embarrassment and censure by publicly displaying their support for woman suffrage. As their participation became routine, the novelty of it wore off. These privileged male champions of woman suffrage inspired men of other classes—including urban immigrants and rural, upstate men—to reconsider their suffrage stance. This unique aspect of the suffrage coalition thereby played a lesser but crucial role in winning the vote for women.