Anna Grabolle-Çeliker’s Kurdish Life in Contemporary Turkey: Migration, Gender, and Ethnic Identity is a meticulous ethnography on the profound transformation of Kurdish society and its patriarchal culture with migration within Turkey. Based on twelve years of research, the book follows a group of villagers in the eastern city of Van as they migrate to the city center and to western Turkey. The result is a multilayered work that analyzes different social dimensions of migration, such as discourses, social networks, everyday lives, marriages, and religious practices. Such diverse aspects are woven together seamlessly and form a thorough picture that tells us the story of one small village community and more generally of recently urbanite Kurds in contemporary Turkey. The central dynamic that drives the ethnography is that Kurdish migrants navigate between Kurdishness and hegemonic Turkish culture, modern institutions and tribal structures, and individualist and communitarian interests in their struggle for socioeconomic...

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