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Geleneksel-modern tartışmaları içinde din daha çok özele çekilirken, toplumsal cinsiyet
alanında yeni kimlikler, roller, yaşam tarzları (üniseks) ortaya çıkmıştır. Bu çalışmada da
genel olarak toplumsal değişme sürecinde din ve toplumsal cinsiyet ilişkisi lise gençliği
örneğinde ele alınmıştır. Öncelikle farklı değişkenlere bağlı olarak lise gençliğinin dini tutum
ve davranışları, toplumsal cinsiyet rollerine ilişkin tutum ve davranışları, üniseks yaşama
yönelik tutum ve davranışları incelenmiştir. Bu incelemelerden sonra din-toplumsal cinsiyet
ilişkisi gözlem ve elde edilen bulgularla analiz edilmiştir. Ayrıca bulgulara ve dinlerde var
olan toplumsal cinsiyet kalıplarına dikkat çekilerek kadına ayrımcılık konusuna vurgu
yapılmıştır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: Din, toplumsal cinsiyet, cinsiyet, kadın, üniseks yaşam
RELIGION AND GENDER IN SOCIAL CHANGE: THE CASE OF HIGH
SCHOOL YOUTH
HARUN TUNÇ
Summary
It is known sociologically that gender is socio-cultural and it signs masculine and
effeminate character, attitude models, roles, responsibilities etc. The perception of gender
roles may change according to economical situation, education level, religious belief and
urbanization level. In this context, when it is thought in the perspective of religion and
community relations, it is analyzed that in consisting and consolidation of gender of the
community religion has got an important place. Also the historical events show that the
companions of a religion gain mentality and ideology in the light of this religion, including
a lot of actions from daily works to community gender. However, when we think the word
"everything changes" we should know that the perceptions and judgments of the people about
communal subjects may not be same in every community and every period. Thus, human
beings experience a modernization process that has got alternative and transformer. And
religion and gender is affected from modernization. While the religion was being specialized
in the argument of conventional - modern, new identifies, roles, life styles (unisex) appeared.
In this context, after these investigations, religious-gender relationship is analyzed on the
sample of high school youth. Primarily according to different variables, the attitudes and
behaviors of high school
youth towards religious, social gender roles and unisex are studied.
After these investigations, the relationship between religion and community is analyzed by
observing the symptoms obtained. Additionally, the differentiation towards woman is
emphasized by drawing attention to symptoms and communal gender forms.
Keywords: Religion, gender, sex, woman, unisex life style
251
CULTURAL AND PERSONAL PATTERNING OF EXPERIENCE:
MULSIM MESKHETIANS FROM DEPORTATION TO REPATRIATION
Jvan Yazdani Deahkhareghani
INTRODUCTION
The Muslim population of Meskheti was deported from Georgia SSSR in
1944, and resettled in Central Asia. The ethnographic data that I draw upon here
have been collected during six months of fieldwork research in Georgia, conducted
in 2014 in the regions of Guria and Samtskhe-Javakheti, where some families of
deportees, and of their descendants, have managed to come back at different times
over the past 3-4 decades. The oldest among my informants have experienced
deportation, life in exile and – often through dramatic ways – return to their native
lands. Those nowadays residing in Georgia are, in fact, a very tiny and politically
marginalized group (Tournon 2009, p. 203), of about one thousand individuals,
themselves part of what has become a truly transnational minority.
In what follows, I set out to demonstrate how denaturalizing concepts of
collective identity can help us better understand the strategies and life projects of
networks of individuals across the transnational space.
Concerning the nomenclature, I refer to them as “(deported) Meskhetians”,
thus placing emphasis on something hardly disputable, i. e., their geographical
origins at the moment of deportation, rather than adopting questionable ethnonyms
based on primordial conceptions of identity
1
. It goes without saying that my choice
should be also understood in regard to the particular setting of research, e. g.,
repatriates' communities in Georgia: here the majority of my informants assert a
Georgian identity, and consider the country where they reside as their
homeland;
what's more, their discourse about identity and belonging conveys an understandding
of home as a place where seeking protection and rights of citizenship (Lynn Uehling
2007), rather than stances based on ethnicity or on essentialist characters. Their
narratives signal a discourse on identity that combines, on one hand, an
understanding of territorially based citizenship (Levin p. 9), and on the other, in
Antony D. Smiths' terms, the function of “answering to the problem of personal
oblivion ” by inscribing individuals in a political “super-family”(Smith 1999, pp.
160-161). It is noteworthy that most of my informants are adamant in asserting the
place of the Meskhetians (
Meskhebi in Georgian language) firmly within Georgian
national identity and cultural heritage. This orientation recalls the official history of
Georgia, which assigns to the population of the historical region of Meskheti a
prominent part in the history of the nation (Tournon 2009, p. 4). Whether the Muslim
population of Meskheti descended, historically, from the Muslim inflow of Turks,
1
I follow the example set by other authors who endeavored to adopt a terminology as
neutral as
possible on the ethno-national orientation and on the theory of origin of the deportees and of
their descendants. e. g., Tournon, Sophie, op. cit., p. 193 and note 2; Trier, T., Tarkhan-
Mouravi, G., Kilimnik, F.,
Meskhetians: Homeward Bound.... Tbilisi: European Centre for
Minority Issues – Caucasus, 2011. p. 4.