Uploaded May 2022 | Updated September 2026, 2 hours ago
At this Wednesdays at the Center talk, Dr. Banu Gökariksel offered a presentation titled: "Balconies, Windows, and Doorways: The Architecture of Living Difference among Alevi and Sunni Neighbors in urban Turkey."
While encounters with strangers in public spaces have been central to ideas about the politics of difference, this presentation argues for the ethical and political significance of encounters among neighbors that take place within the liminal, porous, and ambiguously public/private spaces of neighborhoods.
Drawing on research conducted between 2013 and 2016, the researchers focused on the dynamic entanglements of everyday relations between Alevi and Sunni neighbors in three cities across Turkey. Balconies, windows, and doorways in apartment buildings provide uncertain boundaries between interiority/exteriority that simultaneously generate intimacy and distance, privacy and exposure. The researchers argue that the effective architecture of neighborhood life creates multiple openings for receptive ethical engagement with difference among neighbors. However, there are also anxious antagonisms that exacerbate the precarity of marginalized populations such as Alevis.
Dr. Banu Gökarıksel is Professor of Geography and the Chair of the Curriculum in Global Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The event was part of Wednesdays at the Center, a series produced by Duke University's John Hope Franklin Center and the Duke Center for International & Global Studies.
Learn more about the series: https://igs.duke.edu/series/wednesdays-center-series
At this Wednesdays at the Center talk, Dr. Banu Gökariksel offered a presentation titled: "Balconies, Windows, and Doorways: The Architecture of Living Difference among Alevi and Sunni Neighbors in urban Turkey."
While encounters with strangers in public spaces have been central to ideas about the politics of difference, this presentation argues for the ethical and political significance of encounters among neighbors that take place within the liminal, porous, and ambiguously public/private spaces of neighborhoods.
Drawing on research conducted between 2013 and 2016, the researchers focused on the dynamic entanglements of everyday relations between Alevi and Sunni neighbors in three cities across Turkey. Balconies, windows, and doorways in apartment buildings provide uncertain boundaries between interiority/exteriority that simultaneously generate intimacy and distance, privacy and exposure. The researchers argue that the effective architecture of neighborhood life creates multiple openings for receptive ethical engagement with difference among neighbors. However, there are also anxious antagonisms that exacerbate the precarity of marginalized populations such as Alevis.
Dr. Banu Gökarıksel is Professor of Geography and the Chair of the Curriculum in Global Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
The event was part of Wednesdays at the Center, a series produced by Duke University's John Hope Franklin Center and the Duke Center for International & Global Studies.
Learn more about the series: https://igs.duke.edu/series/wednesdays-center-series
