Ethnicity, identity, cultural change. Kurdish, Turkish and Turkish Cypriot communities in North London

Pattison, Gary and Tavsanoglu, Solmaz (2002) Ethnicity, identity, cultural change. Kurdish, Turkish and Turkish Cypriot communities in North London. Everyday Cultures Working Papers, (1), 1-16.

Abstract

This paper explores the relationship between ethnicity, identity and cultural change amongst North London’s Kurdish, Turkish and Turkish Cypriot communities. Firstly, the paper focuses on how different ethnic organizations construct different notions of collective identities and explores how they perceive ethnic cultures and ethnic communities in North London. In doing this it takes six different ethnic organizations as case studies. Secondly, this study focuses on how individuals construct their personal identities and position themselves in everyday life as well as how they relate themselves to the ethnic organizations and ethnic communities. In doing this it looks specifically at three individual cases.

The highly qualitative nature of the study aims to explore the above through a series of extracts from both indepth semi-structured interviews with the organizations and individual’s life stories. This work presents a contrasting picture of how personal and collective identities are constructed and reconstructed within differing circumstances. It concludes with Hall’s (1992) argument that identity, culture and ethnicity are social constructs based on discourses specifically set, positioned and situated.

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