Twofold Culture: Ethnography of Emotional Life in in a Marginalized and Tayefeh-based Community in Tabriz

The aim of this article is an ethnographic study of a Tayefeh-based community in a poor and marginalized neighborhood in Tabriz. The focus of research is on the relation between individuals and Tayefeh community. Therefore, psychological anthropology in general and anthropology of emotions in particular, shaped analytical insights of writer. Data of the article extracted from different periods of long-term fieldwork during some periods in 2020 in Gopanlar. Everyday observations, situated listening, and presence or participant observation in everyday life and particular situations helped researcher to produce field notes. Then, analytic themes created. The text is written in a special style of ethnographic writing. Life in a Tayefeh-based community of Gopanlar created a twofold culture which influenced the emotions of members, men and women, in two different ways: degraded elders, feeling of power among young men, omnipresence of Tayefeh shadow, and wounds of words. This twofold culture, by creating two different emotional worlds, simultaneously leaded to tendency / fleeing from the neighborhood among different groups. The approach of Culture and Personality School for analyzing the tensions within culture didn’t work. Then, I applied Gregory Batesons schizmogenesis for understanding the emotional life of Gopanlar people.