A Section of the Life of Female Security Guards

Abstract

This study was conducted with female village guards working in the Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia regions. In particular, it is aimed to reveal the social and cultural lives of the village guards, who have been living in an environment of conflict for 37 years, with their own expressions, and to reveal the planes in which these individuals are positioned with the parameters of representation and identity. Our basic question is; “Who are the female village guards, how do they define themselves and where do they position themselves?” The women who chose the village guard profession and continued their lives were interviewed through participatory observation. An “Ethics Committee Decision” was taken for the interviews. By reaching the interviewees with the snowball method, the components of culture and identity were described with the qualitative method. This study, which was carried out through in-depth interviews, was adapted from the completed doctoral thesis. One of the important issues that social sciences focus on is the concept of "identity". From the outside, although village guards seem like a professional group and social status, when they are contacted, it is understood that the village guard exceeds the profession and becomes an important representation that is active in daily and social life. Therefore, it is observed that a profession group initiated by the state and created to provide employment has developed a different identity from other professions. Our main problem is; In order to reach the components of identity construction, social identity, classification and ultimately the representation of identity, symbols, sense of belonging, elements of nationalism and differentiation were determined as the sub-questions sought. The phenomenon of identity, which includes the behaviors of recognition, promotion and belonging, is one of the subjects of social anthropology as well as many other disciplines. In this sense, while identity is constructed individually and socially with internal and external dynamics, it reveals itself through the synthesis of different components. The prominent factors for the construction of the identities of female village guards, ethnicity, religion, language and the profession of village guards were tried to be explained.