Abstract
This study examines Istanbul’s cymbalsmiths as a community that both preserves tradition and redefines identity beyond borders. While often overlooked in economic geography, cymbal making represents a unique case of how artisanal knowledge travels across generations, geographies, and cultures. Rooted in the embeddedness of local workshops, the craft embodies social ties, tacit knowledge, and cultural continuity. At the same time, through global circulation of instruments from Ottoman guilds to today’s international music industry, it constructs identities that transcend national and disciplinary boundaries. This study proposes a conceptual framework based on embeddedness, path dependency, and contextuality to analyze how cymbalsmiths sustain their practice while contributing to translocal forms of belonging. By focusing on the Istanbul case, the paper highlights how craftsmanship is not merely nostalgic heritage but a living economic and cultural practice that forges new communities of sound, labor, and identity across borders. In doing so, it contributes to critical cultural studies and to reimagining the role of the humanities in understanding how crafts can bridge the local and the global, tradition and modernity, memory and innovation.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Craftsmanship, Economic Geography, Cultural Geography, Embeddedness, Path Dependency
