Exploring the construction of the identities of Kula, a place in Aegean Anatolia.

This dissertation is concerned with investigating the construction of the identities of a place, that is, the way we spatially, socially , and mentally create, understand and give meaning to a place of habitations. Significantly, the dissertation focuses on Kula, a small Anatolian town in the Aegean region, and explores the impact of certain changes since the mid-19th century on the construction of its identities. These changes include industrialization, modernization, the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, secularization, and the historic preservation regulations implemented on town since the 1980s. Kula has been exposed to these macro scale socio-economic and political changes that had their impacts on the routinized spatio-social practices which can be distinguishable in ethnic, class and gender differences. The objective of this dissertation is, through an interactive model of analysis, to trace and demonstrate how 'space,' 'practice,' and 'memory' that simultaneously make a place also transform each other while they are affected by outside impacts. The dissertation takes the theoretical point of departure that space is both an agent and a product of the identities of a place and that both are perpetually transformed on the basis of the dialectical relations of extrinsic and intrinsic factors. These factors together determine the relationship of the spaces, the social life, and the perception of the individuals, and transformations of and in these relations. Extrinsic and intrinsic dynamics can be seen as the two extremes setting the limits of the everyday world such that they are assimilated into habitus. Focusing on a single site such as Kula, which has not been the site of a grand planning scheme in Turkey and exploring the transformations in indigenous spatial practices, offer insights on the nature of transformations in peripheral places. In composing my research approach I draw upon four realms of investigations, namely the reading of the social history of architecture, the interpretation of lived experiences and created meanings, and the analysis of the spatial structure. Most of the primary data gathered was collected during the nine-month stay in Kula. Besides a work at the archive of title deeds, ethnographic interviews, and a survey investigating the socio-cognitive realm were conducted with the old and current inhabitants of Kula. The spatial structure of town was examined by space syntax analysis. The overall exploration of the identities of Kula was concluded by juxtaposing the results of these investigations.Ph.D.ArchitectureCommunication and the ArtsCultural anthropologySocial SciencesSocial structureUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/125329/2/3192608.pd