The creation of local community and identity.Boundaries in the Bulgarian town of Kardzhali
The creation of local community and identity.Boundaries in the Bulgarian town of Kardzhali

Author(s): Maria Markova
Subject(s): Anthropology, Sociology, Politics and Identity, Identity of Collectives
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: Kardzhali; city name; borders; cultures; identity; city; Turkish; Bulgarian; refugees; coexistence
Summary/Abstract: During the first half of the 20th century the Bulgarian city of Kardzhali was a border area, where the old (Turkish, Gypsies) and the newly arrived communities (Bulgarians, Jewish, Armenians, Russians) coexisted and cooperated. This region experienced a variety of transformations and the creation of the local community. The transformational processes are somewhat reflected in the name of the city which has the function of both a visible and an invisible anthropological border. The main ethnical opposition between Bulgarians and Turks is maintained even nowadays in the territorial positioning of the communities in the city. One of the focal points are the legends of the city’s name. The Turkish and the Bulgarian versions represent another demarcation and community selfidentification by the means of remembrance. The Turkish versions have been permanently guarded in the collective memory of the local Turkish population and are among the bases of its identity. They are distinguished by anthropocentrism, mythologizing of The Ancestor, argumentation for the purity of the origin of the local population by the myth of common descent, connection with the Ottoman invasion and the colonization of the Eastern Rhodopes, binding of the city territory and name with the Muslim and the Turkish community.

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