This region of north-eastern Turkey was part of ’Lazistan’, a former Ottoman sub-province extending from the eastern Black Sea into lands that now lie deep inside the Georgian Republic.
The social life of this region today offers rich possibilities for anthropological analysis. Most people acknowledge some from of identity as Lazi and many speak Lazuri, a language that is
related to Georgian, not Turkish, However, religion appears even more significant than ethnicity. Like the other groups of this region, most Lazi are strongly committed to Islam, but critical
of recent fundamental trends.
Recent developments are examined in the context of more general changes in Turkish civil society and widespread doubts about the continued viability of the secular institutions of Ataturk’s
republic.
This volume, based on field work between 1983 and 1999, makes a significant contribution to the anthropological literature on Turkey and the wider Middle Eastern and Black Sea regions. It will
also appeal to Turkish specialists in other disciplines and to all those interested in current debates in the social sciences about identity, ethnicity and globalization.
