Socio-cultural borders and perception of otherness: Yörük and Dağlı in Çumra example

This study titled "Socio-Cultural Boundaries and the Perception of Otherness: Yoruks and Daglıs in the Case of Çumra" was carried out on the social groups of "Yoruks and Dağlıs" residing in Konya's Çumra district and surrounding villages. This study was carried out to understand the cause/effect relationship of the formation processes of "Yoruk and Daglı" social groups, the socio-cultural boundaries and the impact of the perception of otherness on the communities. Although the focus groups of our research, "Yoruks and Daglıs", have common cultural values and social group structures, they have acquired two separate group forms due to various socio-cultural factors and have continued to exist until today. Communities have always varied with their historical processes, cultural values, living conditions and levels of perception. For this reason, beyond performing a classical community or social group analysis on the "Yoruk and Daglı" groups, it was aimed to reach the social reality of the area by questioning the nature of their formation processes and dynamics. Although communities form around similar goals, it is obvious that they maintain their uniqueness in the context of the phenomena they produce and develop. In order for these communities to survive, there has always been a need for each other's knowledge. Knowledge of the other or ways of perceiving the other fulfill a function that enables communities to build or maintain themselves in the field of social reality. Therefore, the main question of our research is "As a result of what social and cultural factors did Yoruks and Daglıs build their social group identities?" On what grounds did they determine and develop their socio-cultural boundaries depending on the perception of otherness? It was determined as . In this context, in order to find answers to the problems of our research, data obtained through participant observation and in-depth interviews and sources in similar study areas were examined, and comparative analysis and anthropological and sociological interpretation were carried out.