Author
Sipahi, Ali
Publication Date
2020-06
Publication Place
-
Taylor & Francis
Subject
Post-war Turkey, Ethnographic authority, Public culture, Photojournalism, Fieldwork
Type
Periodical
Language
English
Digital
Yes
Manuscript
No
Library
Özyeğin University
Library Asset ID
0275-7206
Record ID
ff966485-b184-4350-8fde-f2dbddaa9769
Library Location
Humanities and Social Sciences
Date
2020-06
Sample Text
The article is a historical study of ethnographic practices in non-academic fields of culture. It examines the practices and artefacts of cultural production in post-war Turkey and reveals that in the long 1950s popular as well as elite culture lived through an 'ethnographic moment' in which ethnographic authority was elevated to be the dominant criterion for the evaluation of good work. During this ethnographic moment, artists, writers and journalists turned their professional practices into ethnographic fieldwork, forged distinction based on their ethnographic methodology, and excluded armchair practitioners as amateurs. By focusing on four main fields - folklore, painting, cinema, and photojournalism - in post-war Turkey, this study disentangles the history of ethnographic practices from the narrower scope of the history of anthropology/sociology and situates it in an overarching account of cultural encounters with the others. In this period, any form of representation of the others was expected to be based on intersubjective intimacy, first-hand experience, and local knowledge. Modern ethnographic methodology was the zeitgeist of public culture.
DOI
10.1080/02757206.2020.1777113
