Diasporic Homeland, Rise of Identity and New Traditionalism: The Case of the British Alevi Festival

Abstract

While collective memory is based on rituals that built upon mourning and commemoration in Anatolian Alevism, the common culture of “festivity” is not widespread and deep-rooted. Public events of Alevis, mostly called as “Traditional Festival”, are mainly a recent phenomenon as a product of urbanization process. This study addresses the building and functioning of Alevi identity in diaspora over 9^th Britain Alevi Festival that is one of these events. The Festival enables to make observations and analyses on certain subjects such as local network, political baggage, identity and sense of belonging issues, and finally homeland projection of British Alevi society via its organization process, backer-ups, spatial aspect, discourse and content. Besides general observations and data that I obtained during my post-doctoral research project that I conducted between August 2018-2019 on Alevi community settled in London, the main data for this study come from participant observation, interviews and field notes that I compiled on the Festival grounds between May 25 and June 2, 2019.