Kurdish Life in Contemporary Turkey: Migration, Gender, and Ethnic Identity by Anna Grabolle-Çeliker (review)

Anna Grabolle-Çeliker’s Kurdish Life in Contemporary Turkey: Migration, Gender, and Ethnic Identity is a meticulous ethnography on the profound transformation of Kurdish society and its patriarchal culture with migration within Turkey. Based on twelve years of research, the book follows a group of villagers in the eastern city of Van as they migrate to the city center and to western Turkey. The result is a multilayered work that analyzes different social dimensions of migration, such as discourses, social networks, everyday lives, marriages, and religious practices. Such diverse aspects are woven together seamlessly and form a thorough picture that tells us the story of one small village community and more generally of recently urbanite Kurds in contemporary Turkey. The central dynamic that drives the ethnography is that Kurdish migrants navigate between Kurdishness and hegemonic Turkish culture, modern institutions and tribal structures, and individualist and communitarian interests in their struggle for socioeconomic survival in the city. While the book excels in showing how the need for economic and social capital underlies migrants’ motivations, we could get a better sense of their dilemmas and struggles if the ethnography focused more deeply on their stories and perspectives. We would thereby better grasp how people come to terms with tremendous structural changes and what sorts of meaning systems replace the patriarchal system. I will explain these points below as I go through the chapters briefly.

In the first two chapters following the introduction, Grabolle-Çeliker explains the structural transformation of the Kurdish patriarchy in the course of migration. It is a familiar story for migration scholars; people leave the village due to its economic and educational limitations. As younger generations gain financial independence and elder male members lose control of family resources, socioeconomic differentiation in the family becomes conspicuous. New economic positions lead to the unsettling of the traditional gender-age hierarchy and reorganization of relations in the lineage. Therefore, the author points out, several intergenerational tensions arise. One of these tensions is the issue of postmarital residence. She demonstrates its importance for women’s freedom, yet it would be interesting to get a sense of what kinds of new meanings emerge as people distance themselves from the patriarchal domain. How does the notion of home change for new couples, for instance, and how do they invest their social and economic capital in their homes?

In the next three chapters Grabolle-Çeliker analyzes the role of ethnic and local identities in the constitution of urban lives. Taking a structuralist position, she argues that socioeconomic concerns determine the extent to which migrants enliven their cultural identities or assimilate into the mainstream Turkish culture. For one, they speak Kurdish less but still maintain an idea of “we the Kurds” to sustain solidarity networks with fellow Kurds. Also, they establish “hometown organizations” and subscribe to the tribal power dynamics to guarantee support for health and education issues. Grabolle-Çeliker’s informants are not politically organized Kurds, because in that case we would see a different emphasis of ethnicity. For the unorganized Kurds, the author astutely shows that as the tribes fulfill migrants’ need for social capital, public institutions become less relevant and individuals more dependent on such patriarchal structures.

In the last three chapters Grabolle-Çeliker focuses on the lives of women more closely. First she posits that marriage continues to be the norm for women in the city and that through marriage they live under dominant Kurdish gender discourse. Then, through short examples from different women’s marriage stories, she shows that women both reinforce and maneuver in the Kurdish patriarchy; this analysis is theoretically grounded on Deniz Kandiyoti’s concept of “patriarchal bargains.” The book provides intriguing examples of how Kurdish women validate themselves and their new roles in the city by adhering to ideals such as domesticity, modesty, and seclusion. They practice religion more vigorously to embody the image of women as “clean” in both domestic...