MiReKoc
MIGRATION RESEARCH PROGRAM
AT THE KOÇUNIVERSITY
Project No:24
Principal Researcher:Levent SOYSAL
Affiliation:Kadir Has University
Project Title:WorldCity Berlin and the Spectacles of Identity: Public Events, Immigrants and the Politics of Performance
Research Abstract:
This research expands on my dissertation work and prior research in Berlin, where I have been conducting fieldwork since 1990. The project concerns the changing meaning and constitution of public events and the performance of identity. The research site is Berlin—a self-designated “Open City,” exhibiting myriad public events and home to the largest immigrant population in Germany. The modes of immigrant participation in Berlin’s public spectacles reveal the elaborate connections between the social and cultural spaces of host and home countries. For the Turkish immigrants, these public spectacles occupy a significant place in ordering their (everyday) experiences in the social spaces of Berlin and implicate salient movements between Germany and Turkey, and the margins and the core of Europe.
At the locus of this study are the Carnival of Cultures, May Day Parade, and Turkish Day Parade, all of which attract significant participation of Turkish immigrants as audiences and performers. While the Love Parade hardly attracts the attention of the immigrant youth of Berlin, the May Day Parade and the Carnival of Cultures are unthinkable without large contingents of immigrant performers and participants and the Christopher Street Day Parade provides a forum for the increasing presence of gay immigrants in public spaces of Berlin. In 2002, at the 40th anniversary of Turkish immigration to Germany, Berlin had its first “Annual Turkish Day” parade, gathering close to 50,000 participants from all corners of Germany.
Is organizing Turkish Day in Berlin a sign of displacement and dislocation, and a marker of nostalgic orientation to “homes” elsewhere? Or does it implicate salient movements between Turkey and Germany, places of “origin” and “destination,” and the margins and the core of Europe? What do public festivals, May Day and the Carnival of Cultures, for instance, reveal about the relation of immigrants to Berlin and the degree of their participation in the economies and social and cultural life of the city? How do undercurrents of Europeanization, national configurations of culture, and the transnational connections of immigrants figure into the project of making Berlin once again a cosmopolitan Metropolis? By subjecting public spectacle to anthropological analysis, this research aims to delineate the limits of identity as a concept and praxis, and to understand the changes in cultural production and civic participation in a world now imagined as increasingly “global.” Concurrently, through the investigation of the modes of immigrant participation in public events the research aims to disclose the elaborate connections that are emerging between the social and cultural spaces of host and home countries.