Yael Navaro-Yashin (Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge)
Vocal Dwellings: Materiality, Commensurability, and the Eloquence of the Built Environment in Istanbul
This paper studies the relations which contemporary urban dwellers in Istanbul forge with domestic spaces and built environments left behind by minority communities who have departed. The focus is on the neighbourhoods of Fener and Balat, previously inhabited by Istanbuli Greeks and Jews and presently populated by migrants from various parts of Anatolia, including Kastamonu, Bitlis, and Sivas. I study the ways in which these districts’ current inhabitants narrate the past of the dwellings and buildings they have bought, rented, or appropriated, how they tell the stories of the ruins (including the Byzantine and Ottoman remains) which surround them, and how they interact with minority visitors to the area. Theoretical reflections on materiality and commensurability are produced out of these ethnographic observations about the affective force of materialities in an urban environment.
