SELDAS ANDRA BRÖLLOP

Berättelse om hur det är:
turkiska andragenerationsinvandrare.
identitet, etnicitet, modernitet, etnologi.

av Magnus Berg

Akademisk avhandling som med vederbörligt tillstånd av Humanistiska fakultetsnämnden vid Göteborgs universitet för avläggande av filosofie doktorsexamen 1994.

Abstrackt

Seldas Second Wedding
Narratives about how it is; Turkish second generation immigrants, identity, ethnicity, modernity, ethnology.
(writing in Swedish with and English summary)
By Magnus Berg
Skrifter från Etnologiska föreningen I Västsverige 18
Gothenburg 1994

This thesis is an ethnological study of discussions and narratives conveyed by 26 Turkish second generation immigrants in Gothenburg. This purpose of the study is to portray the identity work which takes place in the borderland between a religiously legitimatised and agrarian-based Turkish culture, and a modern, secular zed Swedish/Western culture. One of the ambitions has been to examine what part ethnicity plays in this work. Methodically, the thesis is mainly based on 21 group discussions held whit the young Turks (17-33 years old), but also on individual interviews, participant observation and, on two occasions, fieldwork in Turkey. The theoretical perspective of the thesis can be characterized as knowledge sociological, modernity theoretical and culture analytical, and this attitude towards ethnicity as constructivistic.
The thesis divides into three parts. The first, The Road Hither, treats in three chapters the collective identities contained in Turkish history, the emigration from Turkey and its relation to the overall process of change of postwar Turkey, and the Turkish group in Gothenburg and its socially marginalized position.
The second part. Big Words, starts with an operationalization of the concept ethnicity. Ethnicity is understood as an idiom centred around a claim for unity. Assisted by this idiom, two kinds of narratives are constructed. Transcontextual. Narratives are characterized by an aspiration for forming a pattern of interpretation which is applicable on as many contexts or social situations as possible. They are used in order to construct what is called "ethnic ideologies". The contextual narration lacks the transcontextual narratio´s strive for systematics. It is composed or reference to the ethnical knowledge which derives from the varying demands for identity denunciations of everyday-life.
Two transcontextual narratives clearly discern in the material. The analysis of these is structured by three themes: Turkish history, (emically defined) culture and the Turkish colony in Gothenburg. The last theme is ascribed great explanatory value as regards sociology of knowledge. The two narratives are as to their content in many respects each other's opposite: one is based on Turkish tradition, the other on modernity. However, they both derive from the same social position and they have a mutual mission: to break the marginalization of the Turkish group.
The third part, Growing up, treats the contextual narration. In four chapters, the ethnical references the young Turks make when they converse about the identity work of adolescence, is discussed. The analysis follows three themes: the construction of gender, questions of knowledge, authority, individuals and collectives, and the completion of adolescence.

Key-words: Turkish second generation immigrants, identity, modernity, narratives, culture, historiography.


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