GÖRÜCÜLÜK GELENEKLERİ: TÜRK ETNOPEDAGOJİSİNDE TEMSİL VE ONAY
BRIDE-VIEWING TRADITIONS: REPRESENTATION AND SOCIAL APPROVAL IN TURKISH ETHNOPEDAGOGY

Summary/Abstract: Bride-viewing is a process of encounter and social approval in which a young woman’s terbiye (upbringing, manners, decorum, and knowledge of proper conduct) and her family’s respectability are evaluated by visitors from outside the household. This article examines how terbiye, acquired within the family, is represented and evaluated in bride-viewing through service, deference, and spatial order. In this study, ethnopedagogy refers to the cultural educational order through which terbiye is learned within the family and transmitted across generations. In this respect, bride-viewing is analyzed as an ethnopedagogical encounter in which small but meaningful signs, such as sitting and standing, gaze, the order of speaking, the flow of hospitality, and the arrangement of objects, become part of a system of evaluation. Based on interview and observation data collected in Konya/Meram, the study shows that service and deference become a language of representation in bride-viewing, and that the suitability of the prospective bride is understood through this performance. The room where guests are received, the seating arrangement, the choice of objects, and the order of service also convey silent messages about the prospective bride’s social competence. The findings show that bride-viewing rests on a logic of evaluation in which proper conduct and spatial order intersect. The study also discusses the transformation of bride-viewing under modernization and digitalization. Although the tradition changes form and moves into digital interfaces, it maintains its core ethnopedagogical function of evaluating and approving terbiye.

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