Music as a Resource for Drawing Symbolic Boundaries within the Turkish Diaspora in Germany

Music as a Resource for Drawing Symbolic Boundaries within the Turkish Diaspora in Germany

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The paper presents the HULLED MILLET findings of an ethnographic study of five Turkish music choirs from Hamburg from the perspective of cultural sociology, focused on the meaning-making process.Following Andy Bennett, music is regarded as a resource, and then it is scrutinized how Turkish immigrants make sense of their lives through music.The research is based on the qualitative analysis of indepth, semi-structured interviews with choir members from Hamburg.The paper elaborates on how choir members use music as a resource to draw internal symbolic boundaries within the Turkish community.Participants draw symbolic boundaries against the majority of the Turkish population living in Germany.

On the basis of the distinction they make between refined music and the uncultured music exemplified, choir members deliberately create a number of sacred and profane binaries Ping Pong Tables in the Durkheimian sense.