Date of Award

2021

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Baram, Uzi

Area of Concentration

General Studies

Abstract

Weddings are a microcosm for which larger sociocultural forces can be studied. Factors that influence society will influence culture, which consequently will affect a major cultural affair such as a wedding. In Turkey where the fall of the Ottoman Empire gave rise to the Turkish Republic, the political, economic, and societal changes that developed during this transition and beyond profoundly affected the Turkish culture and its traditions, especially among secular urban elites. In this thesis, I will discuss and analyze how Turkish wedding traditions among the urban elites of Istanbul have been transformed, from the late Ottoman Empire to contemporary times, by globalization born out of Turkey’s modernization efforts and neoliberal governmental policies. Globalization-driven cultural transformation of traditions has occurred relatively faster and more easily among urban elites given their wealth and access to globalized products, ideas, and education, making them participants in the globalized reproduction of cultural traditions. Indeed, many wedding traditions have been continued from the Ottoman past, but secular urban elites have distanced themselves far enough from Ottoman identity, and its corresponding associations with religiosity and rigid social conservatism, that reproducing the Ottoman wedding aesthetic does not bring the globalized elite identity of its participants into question. Engaging in traditions that have been commercialized and commodified by globalization does still consolidate Turkish cultural identity among urban elites but does not diminish the inevitable effects of globalization on culture, which launches a quest for authenticity in a globalized culture.

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