On the Threshold: Land, People, and Porridge in Post-Earthquake Hatay, Turkey

On the Threshold: Land, People, and Porridge in Post-Earthquake Hatay, Turkey

Su Hyeon Cho

University of Oxford, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies

Wednesday, 21 May 2025, 19:00 (GMT+3) at the Orient-Institut Istanbul and online via Zoom

In this lecture, Su Hyeon Cho will reflect on her ethnographic fieldwork in a post-earthquake region of Samandağ, located in Hatay, a border province in southern Turkey. The study centres on harisa, a ritual porridge made of pounded meat and wheat, shared by the Alawite, Armenian, and Greek Orthodox communities. Conceptualised as both a sacrificial offering and an edible form of prayer, harisa is approached as a ‘totalising ritual’ that articulates modes of social reproduction, seasonal transitions, life-cycle events, vow fulfilments, and acts of communal regeneration. Furthermore, these rituals function as a mnemonic device through which historical memories and post-disaster precarity are made present and negotiated in everyday life. Attending to the post-earthquake context, the research explores the multi-layered thresholds at which the borderland, its people, and their ritual practices now precariously stand.

Su Hyeon Cho is a DPhil candidate at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Oxford, and a doctoral scholar at the Orient-Institut Istanbul. She holds a disciplinary background in social anthropology, having trained at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). Prior to returning to academia, she worked in various roles at research institutions, diplomatic missions, and the United Nations across the Middle East.

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VENUE

Orient-Institut Istanbul

Galip Dede Cad. 65, Şahkulu Mah., TR – 34421 Istanbul

Tel: +90 212 293 60 67 oiist@oiist.org www.oiist.org

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