I PERFORMING SOCIAL FORGETTING
PERFORMING SOCIAL FORGETTING IN A POST-CONFLICT LANDSCAPE: THE CASE OF CYPRUS by Rabia Harmanşah BS, Public Administration, Hacetttepe University, 2000 MS, Middle East Studies, Middle East Technical University, 2006 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2014 i UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH THE DIETRICH SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Rabia Harmanşah It was defended on September 9, 2014 and approved by Andrew J. Strathern, Professor, Anthropology Nicole Constable, Professor, Anthropology Bryan Hanks, Associate Professor, Anthropology Clark Chilson, Associate Professor, Religious Studies Dissertation Advisor: Robert M. Hayden, Professor, Anthropology ii Copyright © by Rabia Harmanşah 2014 iii anneme ve babama, daima. iv PERFORMING SOCIAL FORGETTING IN A POST-CONFLICT LANDSCAPE: THE CASE OF CYPRUS Rabia Harmanşah, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2014 This dissertation examines social practices of memory-making and forgetting in Cyprus after the partition of 1974, based on analysis of Orthodox Christian and Muslim religious sites in the Greek/Southern and the Turkish/Northern parts of the island. The central contribution of the dissertation is the development of the concept of social forgetting as a corollary of social memory. I consider forgetting to include selective remembering, mis/disremembering, and omitting, distorting, or silencing past events and experiences, in order to shape collective memory. In the literature, remembering is usually privileged over forgetting, which is taken as negation, neglect, failure to remember, or unintended social amnesia in which people are considered passive actors. This study, however, shows that forgetting can be a desirable goal and positive process for some social actors, accomplished by obscuring material evidence of what another community wishes remembered.
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