Representing Conviviality: Emic Concepts Versus Etic Ones

In this chapter, I explore the ways in which the islanders represented/articulated their pluralism by the emic terms, metaphors/allegories they used when they talked about the diversity of the island. Building on media anthropology, media ethnography and cultural studies (see Pertierra, Media Anthropology for the Digital Age. John Wiley & Sons, 2018; Barker, Cultural Studies. Theory and Practice, 4th ed. SAGE, 2012; Lewis, Cultural Studies. The Basics. 2nd ed. Sage Publications, 2008; Tufte, Living with the Rubbish Queen: Telenovelas, Culture and Modernity in Brazil. Indiana University Press, 2000; Schrøder et al., Researching Audiences. Arnold, 2003), I analyse the representation of diversity and conviviality in Burgaz islanders’ media productions (documentaries, novels, memoires), conducting expert interviews (Bruun, The Qualitative Interview in Media Production Studies. In Advancing Media Production Research, 131–146. Springer, 2016) with the authors of novels and producers of documentaries, and exploring the islanders’ reception of these productions. I then put these emic perceptions in dialogue with the etic concepts of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism. The diversity of emic terms and concepts give a complex picture of conviviality, challenge the literature of multiculturalism and cosmopolitanism, and the ways in which the islanders reproduce and challenge the dominant discourse of pluralism that comes from the Ottoman millet system.