New book: Sînziana Preda, Adriana Cupcea, Melinda Dincă, Manuela Marin, Cultural Heritage and Identity Dynamics in the Turkish-Tatar Community from Dobruja, Romania

    „This volume concerns an in-depth analysis of the cultural heritage and history of the biggest Muslim communities in Romania, the Turks and the Tatars, two of the loyal ethnic groups in the modern Romanian state, although there was a history of tumultuous relations between Romanian Principalities and the Ottoman Empire. As outcome of more than two years of fieldwork and synthesis of collected data, our book offers four perspectives on a topic much discussed today, i.e. ethnic groups.

Reuniting disciplines as oral history, cult ural anthropology, historical archives, imagology, the texts form a contribution brought to all these fields, but also  to the study of ethnic relations and ethnopsychology. It is distinctive, because on a  sociocultural level, the book impact is given by its contribution to integration through  understanding of communities different as origin, religion, traditions, ethics, survival  strategies in the midst of a Christian majority. This effort aims at bringing innovative  approaches in the investigation of cultural and social identity dynamic, seen as a transforming social process within communities. From a constructivist perspective, by this project we reveal several examples of mechanisms in identity construction process. For local and national authorities it can be used as a guide for improving interethnic relations, knowledge and acceptance of Otherness. The book provides a scientific and pertinent survey on representative issues for Muslim history and cultural heritage in southeastern Romania, in order to complete the scientific research bibliography of Tatar and Turkish communities in the Balkans."

The book was printed in 2015 at Editura de Vest Publishing, Timișoara and can be read online here.