Cultural and Sociopolitical Studies

Museology, when applied to Turkish folklore, examines how myths, rituals, ancestral customs, and oral traditions are collected, preserved, and presented to the public — asking not just what these practices are, but what it means to institutionalize living culture within museum walls. Scholars in this area trace how storytelling, traditional beliefs, and ceremonial life encode social structures, including gender roles and community identity, that written history often overlooks. The digitization and virtualization of folklore collections have opened new possibilities for access and interpretation, while also raising pointed questions about authenticity and whose version of a tradition gets preserved. Active debates concern how museums can represent the dynamic, contested nature of cultural heritage without flattening it into static artifact.

Works

103,361

Total citations

53,849

Keywords

FolkloreTurkish CultureRitualsMythologyTraditional BeliefsAncestral Customs