TRAVERSING AN ANATOLIAN VILLAGE: VIEWS FROM THE INSIDE

The development of the house and its domestic and spatial divisions can be understood by looking at associated socio-cultural behavior and functional needs, along with typical building methods and the local economy. Buildings and the context in which they sit, are a result of complex spatial and cultural relationships. The architect and environmental behaviorist Amos Rapoport (1969, 46-49) explained in some of his earliest writings that "the house is an institution, not just a structure, created for a complex set of purposes...buildings and settlements are the visible expression of the relative importance attached to different aspects of life...(1)." The study of architecture can function as a unique lens to successfully evaluate social changes and cultural values. This research focuses on rarely studied central Anatolian Turkish villages to look at the current shift seen in village morphology and the re-making of house and home (2). To analyze habitation over different periods and to aid in the collection of different forms of architectural documentation and interview data, this project intentionally borrows from methodology and theory associated with the disciplines of anthropology and archaeology. Thus, a framework is formed by which to analyze the transformation and evolution of the new domestic life alongside the old. Since the beginning of the Turkish republic in 1923 and especially after the Second World War, academic and popular dialogues have been concerned with analyzing the making of modernity. The many changes seen in the landscape, which are primarily attributed to a process of westernizing and/or modernizing, aid in this analysis. The term globalization is also useful here. It may be understood as the all-encompassing result of these processes along with the pervasive interest in and apparent need for media and other types of connectivity. A series of sub-topics represent, in more detail, some of the conditions, identities, labels and themes that are associated with globalization and the state of modernity in Turkey as well as the specific local region in Anatolia. These cultural conditions are often set up in a binary system of ("either/or") framing contrasts and oppositions rather than being seen as dualities that mark inclusiveness ("both"). For example, we can consider the inhabitants of the village to have both eastern "and" western values; to be simultaneously traditional "and" modern; and to exhibit understanding of living somewhere between rural "and" urban life (3). Research shows a plurality of belief systems that facilitate actions based on both a necessity for change and an interest in achievement (4). One of the primary consequences of modernization that is germane to this research on village culture is the concept of the "hybrid," (and its related word forms such as "hybridity" "hybridized," and "hybridization") or a fusion, blend, mixture or composite. The discussions in academic circles about the formation of a hybrid are mostly post-colonial critiques of place (towns/cities) and the architecture that evolves from this process. An enforced fusion of forms expresses the domination of one group over another and the meshing of those cultures that can result in a question of identity. Turkey's past is not representative of this type of history, yet today economic needs and competition, and the ubiquitous interest in communication technologies serve as the main catalysts for continuing and increasing both observable and hidden global processes found in small (and large settlements). Indeed, the socio-cultural and architectural discontinuities apparent in the villages studied identify a less homogenous, more heterogeneous condition that can be explained as different forms of hybrids. The meaning of hybrid used here exposes: newly composed domestic forms of homes and complexes; new patterns of land use; and a re-evaluation of how regional and individual customs, traditions and value systems are producing other ways of comprehending the meaning of home in both a local and global context. Thus, the term "hybridized landscape" is composed to suggest and describe the current dynamic state of what is seen and felt in the villages studied (5). To assess the past along with the present conditions, this article traverses one settlement called Küçük Köhne Village (KK) in detail. This village is one of ca. 110 villages in the region of Sorgun, within the province of Yozgat, to the east of Ankara, Turkey's capital (Figure 1 - map of Turkey, village plan). Data, collected in interviews and observations and interpreted through various visual media, are used to explain what appears to remain constant and are being let go of during this time of change and exchange. The key to expressing the finds is an architectural question of representation - that is, how may these conditions - the continuity and discontinuity that has come to exist - be best seen and understood?