Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Milli Folklor, cilt.18, sa.140, ss.5-15, 2023 (AHCI)
In the development process of social and human sciences, folklore, directing at the “village”, emerged somewhere between anthropology, which focused on "clan" and sociology, which turned its face to the "city." In the beginning, with the influence of the Romanticism, folklore was viewed as the richness of the national identity and culture, which has been preserved intact for thousands of years, but is being lost with industrialization, urbanization and intense migration. Over time, this interest has brought along the origin discussions in terms of both national identity and the beginning of cultures, commonalities and similarities. In Western Europe, while compiling and evaluating the richness of the village out of this curiosity, on the other hand, discussions on the source and origins of cultures were carried out. In these discussions, theories on "India" and "Egypt" were put forward regarding the origin of cultures. While India stood out as the spreading center for north of the Europe, Egypt was emphasized in the south of the continent. Turkish intellectuals also participated in these discussions, albeit with a little delay. Many compilations made from villages, both in the Ottoman and Republican periods, were made with the idea that "the untouched essence and source of inspiration of national art are in the village" as well as Herder's approach that "the soul of people is in the village". Hitherto, the most prominent approach in the origin discussion in Turkish folklore has been "Turkistan". In addition to this, opinions which were fed by movements such as "Eti-Sümer", "Nev-Yunanilik", "Mavi Anadoluculuk" had claimed that the origin of Turkish folklore was Anatolia. Undoubtedly, the traces of the Indian and Egypti an expansion theories, which were born in Western Europe, can be found in the prominence of these two views in the development course of the folklore discipline in Türkiye. These different approaches to the origin had also affected the view of the village, thus the traces of Turkestan or ancient Anatolian cultures had been sought in the compilations made from villages. In addition, the data obtained in the collections made from villages were used for the construction of the nation as well as for the formation of "class" with the influence of socialist realist theories following the establishment of the Soviet Union. In the modernization rush of the Turkish Republic, villages were seen as the places where development and change should be brought and the compilations were used for this purpose. The fact that the orientation to the village and folkloric material collections had been motivated by movements such as nationalization, class consciousness and modernization and the discussions of origin from Turkestan to Ancient Greece with some delayed use of the methodology of science could not create productive and useful areas in a line from compilation to identification, from identification to analysis and, from analysis to practice. It is seen that the Turkestan origin, which started in the 1990s when the Turkic Republics gained their independence and gained momentum with the Organization of the Turkic States, came forward and became more of an issue through the discovery of partnerships rather than expansion theories. The Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage, which was adopted by UNESCO in 2003, has developed a "community-based” perspective, leaving the origin discussions completely out of the field of interest and without making any distinctions between village and city. This indicates that, like the "clan" that anthropology focused on at the beginning, the "village" that folklore was once interested disappears both theoretically and in the process of intense urbanization. While the i ssue of origin has lost its importance as a result of despair about the unavailability of "ur-form", the UNESCO Convention does not take this issue into its agenda at all. In this case, it can be concluded that the ICH Convention, which stands out with its suggestions on joint working methods and international lists that provide visibility to the local, is a harbinger that the future cultural studies will be based on "community" and "multinationality" instead of "village" and "origin".