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Remembering Conflicts in a Black Sea Town: A multi-sited Ethnography of Memory
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 July 2015
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From a folkloristic point of view, memory is a repertoire, a potential knowledge that we store, only to perform when we choose. The selective process that defines what to tell is in folklore a function of the performance context. Why we choose to tell a particular story depends on who listens to it and how it is situated within the performative event. From an archeological-historical perspective, however, what we choose to preserve in our landscapes, archives and museums reflects choices made through historical-political processes. Within this framework, for an ethnographer in search of memory, there is an ongoing dialogue between narratives on what people remember and the material cultural context in which these narratives are produced. This essay is an attempt at writing an ethnography of memory in a small Black Sea town, Tirebolu/Tripoli, whose material culture and demographic structure radically changed since the 1900s through the effects of war, harsh climate, forces of modernization, and nationalism. To sum up very briefly, communities in Tirebolu—Muslims and non-Muslims alike—have been displaced at different times, temporarily or permanently since the First World War.
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