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Abstract
There is an increasing overlap between contemporary interpersonal/relational theories and psychological anthropology, especially related in their conceptual formulations of, respectively, the self and culture as dynamic, multiplicious, and discontinuous process. The author argues that these corresponding formulations behoove us consider self and culture are interwoven processes that continuously inform and shape each other, and are shaped by dissociative mental processes. Drawing from a series of ethnographic interviews and participant observation conducted among a cohort of Turkish women, the author argues during the process of enculturation, people learn pertinent, yet devalued, aspects of their culture, and incorporate them into their self-consciousness disjointly. These disjointed aspects of the self can become activated, however, during experiences of cultural discontinuity; the result is often disorganization and inner-conflict regarding identity.
Notes
1 All participant names have been changed to pseudonyms.
2 My doctoral work in cultural anthropology focused on the cultural construction of gender identity and culture change, focusing on the private and social lives of middle-class women who came of age in the 1980s.
3 For this research, I interviewed twenty-five women in their early to mid-30s, with secular, middle-class backgrounds. The interviews were open-ended, each lasting an average of three hours. I conducted more than one interview with some of the informants. During my fieldwork, I also spent numerous hours as a participant observer with the cohort, in person or in groups of friends—sometimes with their family members––hanging out with them in their living rooms, offices, cafes, and bars, and interacting with them as they chatted, ate, cooked, watched TV, strolled along the streets of Istanbul, shopped, went to exhibitions and movies, or attended social events.
4 See Stocking (Citation1986). Malinowski, Rivers, Benedick and Others: Essays on culture and personality. Univ. of Wisconsin Press.
5 Drawing on Freud’s concept of “contextual memory,” Ewing explains that by virtue of an unconscious semiotic process of inconsistency management, individuals shift between “multiple, inconsistent” and “context-dependent” self-representations while still experiencing a ‘whole’ self (Citation1990, p. 251).
6 Also see Biehl, Good, and Kleinman (Citation2007).
7 Anthropology defines enculturation is the formal and informal, and conscious and unconscious process of one’s learning to be a member of their culture. See Poole (Citation2002) for his review of this subject.
8 In 1923, primary school education was made mandatory for both sexes. In 1926, the Grand National Assembly adopted the Swiss Civil Code as the basis of its Civil Law (which includes Family Law), which abolished polygamy, prevented child marriages by imposing a minimum age for marriage, recognized women as legal equals of men, and granted women the right to choose their spouses, initiate divorce, and maintain their maternal rights after a divorce. In 1930, women were granted the right to vote and to run in municipal elections (the right to run in national elections followed in 1934) (Arat, Citation1994).
9 Arat (Citation1994) states that: “[C]ompared to their counterparts in other developing countries, especially those in the Muslim world, Turkish women have enjoyed considerable civil and political rights and been more visible in the public domain […] Consequently, many women in Turkey gained access to education, public office, and employment opportunities comparable to those in industrial countries, although not equally enjoyed by the whole female population” (pp. 57–58).
10 The cohort of my study is part of a generation that is often referred as “Generation 1980” or “Generation post-1980” For a detailed analysis of this generation, see Neyzi (Citation2001).
11 Studies in generation and birth cohort analysis have shown that experiences shared by members of a cohort are fruitful for examining the transmission of culture and culture change, as well as the link between the individual’s life history and social history (e.g. Erikson, Citation1963; LeVine, Citation2011; Mannheim, Citation1952 [1927]; Neyzi, Citation2001; Rozmarin, Citation2009; Rubin, Citation2007).
12 This followed the 1980 military coup and the junta government (1980–1983).
13 By showing the separation that exists between husbands and wives in modern urban families of educated professionals, Olson’s (Citation1982) research challenges the assumption that sexual segregation is an archaic characteristic of rural and extended families headed by patriarchs.
14 At the same time, this indicates that despite their patriarchal values, modernist discourse was meaningful and persuasive to this generation of fathers who were both traditionally and nationalistically identified, which is an important discussion of its own that I will not engage in this paper.
15 From the most external to increasingly inward these domains are: the interpersonal, the interpsychic, the intrapersonal, and the phenomenological domain. Here I engage with the first three domains only.
16 I would like to thank the blind reviewer for his/her comment that helped me clarify this point.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Esin Eğit
Esin Egit, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Department of Social Sciences, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY and a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute’s certificate program in psychoanalysis. She is Chair of the LGBTQ Study Group at the W.A. White Institute.