Hicran KARATAŞ
Hicran Karataş is the Associate Professor of Sociology at Bartın University in Türkiye. She finished her Ph.D. with the "Folk Law Practices and Exiled Brides" thesis in 2016. Her dissertation was published in 2018. Her post-doctoral research comes from ethnographic fieldwork conducted among antiquity looters and smugglers, published in 2021: A Little Bit Criminal: Folklore of Antiquity Looters. State-funded institutions awarded her studies with scholarships. She won Scientific Authored Book Award (TESEP) from the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA) in 2022 with her post-doctoral research. She has designed a state-funded ethnographic research project to picture how folklore and culture affect folk's decisions on organ donations. She has been working in the field since August 2022. Her research interests mainly include criminal folklore, folk law, oral tradition, oral history, and ritual. [email protected]
Address: Bartın Turkey
Address: Bartın Turkey
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Papers by Hicran KARATAŞ
As social contract of society, transitional rituals not only announce these new settings, but also socially define their legitimate justifications. That is why rites of passage are dramatic guides of a community’s age and gender value system. Menopause, which was identified as a transitional period in the 19th century in the area of medicine, is the period that represents the transition of women’s life into the post-middle age phase. Since one third of a women’s life passes in the post-menopausal period, the pre-menopause stage represents the threshold of the menopausal transition period.
At the threshold, the woman is expected to be preparing for the transition with her physical, mental and social fragility, vulnerability and stress. Nevertheless culture centered studies show that culture is effective in understanding and experiencing menopause. Menopause brings privileges to women in cultures where taboos related to the menstrual cycle and gender roles associated with the fear of women regulate women’s daily life and their relationship with the sacred. After menopause, women may become relatively more independent from taboos associated with menstruation in a number of areas, ranging from preparing food to worshiping.
Menopause as an invented transition period in Anatolian Turkish culture has been linked to consciousness concept that suggest women to know their bodies with its all aspects. Media has carried out informative programs where menopause is introduced as second spring of women life. Making vine trees cry is a ritual that adapted an old version of a tradition into new one to celebrate second spring of women life. Making vine trees cry ritual, which was performed for young girls in the 90s with aesthetic concerns is performed for menopausal women in millennium.
The ritual is conducted in certain neighborhoods where working class families live and immigrated to Karabük. This is related to acculturation, ritual performance not being limited to time and space. As a matter of the fact that this ritual has been carried both to other cities of Anatolia and abroad by the women who participated to the ritual and experienced its benefits. The fact that an informant who migrated to France from original locality of the ritual makes her own vine tree cry for her fellow countrymen is also proof of this. The woman who performs the ritual is chosen in the social hierarchy not according to her age but according to severity of the difficulties and challenges that she had survived in life. Suffering from difficulties, which has parameters such as child, spouse, illness, poverty, and taking care of the elderly in the family, determines the hierarchical place of women in the group. Wisdom doesn’t come with age” proverb is repeatedly referred by informants while explaining this arrangement.
Making vine tree cry ritual is performed by demand that a woman entered post-menopause phase asked if ritual could be performed for her. The vine tree to be cried in the ritual must be the one which is old and fruitless. This type of vine tree and woman in menopause are identified with each other in terms of fertility. The ritual is performed while sun is climbing that symbolize the connection between the sun and the woman’s good fortune in the future. Since women divide their life time into two parts as before menopause and after menopause, they make vine tree cry to spend a happy, healthy, comfortable and prosperous life after menopause. Verbalism of emotions and thoughts such as “I cried a lot, you better cry for me anymore”, “ I had enough! I am not young enough to endure” and “you are strong, so you can bear my suffering instead of me” in the ritual represent the transfer of all troubles and bad fortune that can be faced in the future to the vine tree.
While making vine tree cry, the tears seeping from its branch are the ones that the menopausal woman hopes not to shed following the ritual. These tears are believed to be sacred that shed for the last time in this transitional phase that the menopausal woman calls the second spring. After performing ritual, women hang a clean bowl under the amputated branch to accumulate the tears which must be put to use in hair care of young female members of the group. This part of ritual has been adapted from old version of the ritual that was performed for young girls in 90s. Since tears of the vine tree are believed to be sacred anyone and anything touch it must be clean as well. That is why remains of tears must be poured out to a place where no one can step on after the ritual. The social participation of menopausal women standing near the vine tree and young female members watching from far during the ritual strengthens my belief that this very ritual will also be performed in the far future.
Key Words: Folklore, religion, myth, epic, Altai Turkish, Satan
Key words: Folklore, Communication, Humour, Function, Announcements, Message, Illumination
As social contract of society, transitional rituals not only announce these new settings, but also socially define their legitimate justifications. That is why rites of passage are dramatic guides of a community’s age and gender value system. Menopause, which was identified as a transitional period in the 19th century in the area of medicine, is the period that represents the transition of women’s life into the post-middle age phase. Since one third of a women’s life passes in the post-menopausal period, the pre-menopause stage represents the threshold of the menopausal transition period.
At the threshold, the woman is expected to be preparing for the transition with her physical, mental and social fragility, vulnerability and stress. Nevertheless culture centered studies show that culture is effective in understanding and experiencing menopause. Menopause brings privileges to women in cultures where taboos related to the menstrual cycle and gender roles associated with the fear of women regulate women’s daily life and their relationship with the sacred. After menopause, women may become relatively more independent from taboos associated with menstruation in a number of areas, ranging from preparing food to worshiping.
Menopause as an invented transition period in Anatolian Turkish culture has been linked to consciousness concept that suggest women to know their bodies with its all aspects. Media has carried out informative programs where menopause is introduced as second spring of women life. Making vine trees cry is a ritual that adapted an old version of a tradition into new one to celebrate second spring of women life. Making vine trees cry ritual, which was performed for young girls in the 90s with aesthetic concerns is performed for menopausal women in millennium.
The ritual is conducted in certain neighborhoods where working class families live and immigrated to Karabük. This is related to acculturation, ritual performance not being limited to time and space. As a matter of the fact that this ritual has been carried both to other cities of Anatolia and abroad by the women who participated to the ritual and experienced its benefits. The fact that an informant who migrated to France from original locality of the ritual makes her own vine tree cry for her fellow countrymen is also proof of this. The woman who performs the ritual is chosen in the social hierarchy not according to her age but according to severity of the difficulties and challenges that she had survived in life. Suffering from difficulties, which has parameters such as child, spouse, illness, poverty, and taking care of the elderly in the family, determines the hierarchical place of women in the group. Wisdom doesn’t come with age” proverb is repeatedly referred by informants while explaining this arrangement.
Making vine tree cry ritual is performed by demand that a woman entered post-menopause phase asked if ritual could be performed for her. The vine tree to be cried in the ritual must be the one which is old and fruitless. This type of vine tree and woman in menopause are identified with each other in terms of fertility. The ritual is performed while sun is climbing that symbolize the connection between the sun and the woman’s good fortune in the future. Since women divide their life time into two parts as before menopause and after menopause, they make vine tree cry to spend a happy, healthy, comfortable and prosperous life after menopause. Verbalism of emotions and thoughts such as “I cried a lot, you better cry for me anymore”, “ I had enough! I am not young enough to endure” and “you are strong, so you can bear my suffering instead of me” in the ritual represent the transfer of all troubles and bad fortune that can be faced in the future to the vine tree.
While making vine tree cry, the tears seeping from its branch are the ones that the menopausal woman hopes not to shed following the ritual. These tears are believed to be sacred that shed for the last time in this transitional phase that the menopausal woman calls the second spring. After performing ritual, women hang a clean bowl under the amputated branch to accumulate the tears which must be put to use in hair care of young female members of the group. This part of ritual has been adapted from old version of the ritual that was performed for young girls in 90s. Since tears of the vine tree are believed to be sacred anyone and anything touch it must be clean as well. That is why remains of tears must be poured out to a place where no one can step on after the ritual. The social participation of menopausal women standing near the vine tree and young female members watching from far during the ritual strengthens my belief that this very ritual will also be performed in the far future.
Key Words: Folklore, religion, myth, epic, Altai Turkish, Satan
Key words: Folklore, Communication, Humour, Function, Announcements, Message, Illumination
Law, from archaic times until today, has corresponded to a cultural system regulating the relationship and activities between individuals by determining mutual rights and responsibilities. It has been equipped with several regulations for the sake of ensuring the continuity of such institutions as family, economy, education and religion. In this study, it is asserted that in addition to and/or despite the norms of law strengthened by the state authority, folk law orders also have the function of establishing order. This reality can be explained with Pluralistic Legal Theory in the field of social sciences. Thus, the processes of producing, supervising and implementing norms of non-state law orders can be described. In the study, it has been discussed how a local law order produce, inspect and implement its norms. It has been addressed with sample cases, how exile, a punishment traditionalized in the field of the study, has been sustained from past to present. The alteration and transformation of the out-of-norm premarital sexual behavior pertaining to this punishment has been discussed throughout the history of Turkish Law, on the basis of concepts suggested by structural-functional theory. In the context of Pluralistic Legal Theory and Structural-Functional Theory, norm resources of folk legal orders, their units inspecting the norms and the sanctions imposed for violation of norms have been examined based on the intercultural and local samples.
Keywords: Folklore, Oral History, World War II, Ephemera, Trauma, Scarcity.