Place-making Practices in Case of an Uncertain Future: Lifeworlds of Cypriot Maronites Facing Extinction

This thesis presents a phenomenological study of place-making in the context of a crisis in an ethnic minority community of Cypriot Maronites, which is an ethnically endangered population, heading toward an uncertain future. The community experienced huge breakdowns in the social and political domains; they lost their ancestral lands, were legally marginalized, and majorly assimilated into GreekCypriot culture. The community is completely reliant on others and lacks the ability to predict the future, while on-going uncertainty causes great anxiety for its people. Accordingly, the objective of the thesis is to examine the affect of lived experiences of uncertainty and the place-making processes through everyday practices of this community in their remaining ancestral land of Kormakiti village. With the implementation of the existential phenomenological research method and observations and in-depth interviews, the lifeworlds of this small and marginal, yet complex population are drawn together to understand the ways uncertainty is experienced and reflected on the people’s intentional relationship with places. The research explores the various aspects of people’s everyday lived experiences in places, including religious rituals, festival celebrations, acts of dwellings, as well as interactions in the semi-public spaces of eating and drinking establishments. All these scenes commonly affirm the modes of engagement with the place as a longstanding struggle to protect the continued presence and territoriality of the community. At the same time, the research sheds light on the place that is beyond the material and forged by people’s hopes to enlighten the possibility of alternatives. Unlike most place-making studies, this thesis focuses on the progressive formation of place, discovering daily encounters and activities such as dwelling, gathering, and hoping where place is not concerned as a planned or designed end product, but rather lived and constantly re-constituted to create a glimpse of hope for a community on the verge of extinction.