(Viewsexpressed in this article are the personal opinion of the Author, a narrationof her experience.)
Trousseau,or "çeyiz" the Turkish for the practice in amassing goods for marriage,has transformed from the early 1940's to the present to reflect fashion, taste,and economic standing. I will briefly outline the transition in village çeyiz from the early 1940s to the present in this short essay. As a graduate studentof social-cultural anthropology, I began to study the DOBAG (Dogal BoyaArastirma ve Gelistirme Projesi, natural dye research and development project)carpet-weaving cooperative based in Örselli village in western Turkey in 1998.I returned for long-term fieldwork in 2000-1. I then followed up with visits in2002, 2003, and 2004. In 2008, 2009, and 2010, I returned with a differenttopic, Sunni Islam, but also up-dated my material on the cooperative and çeyiz.
Whytrousseau?
Whatbegan as a study of a carpet-weaving cooperative expanded to include trousseauxwhen one day I was interviewing a young woman and her mother weaving carpets.Maybe my questions were uninspiring or perhaps the mother and daughter werebored by the topics of weaving and the cooperative. In either case, theirlackluster answers pushed me to search for a new angle. I asked if they everwove for themselves. I already knew that the practice of weaving for oneselfhad become taboo among members of the cooperative.
This article wasoriginally published in the "12th Benniel Symposium", Textile Society of America, 2010.
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