Virtual Orda. Virtual Dzhemiat. Karaims and Tatars as a Net Community

Abstract

or Karaims – are tied to a very fluid diffusion between the territorially conceptualized identity and the identity arising / constructed and realized in the Internet, being “here” in “reality” and there in “virtual reality”, or conversely. The report is an analysis of the phenomenon of defining the identity of Polish Karaims and Polish Tatars who in changing contexts returned to creating a community, redefining their identity and re-territorialising the space of their communal functioning. The postmodern reality of ethnicity becomes a process of navigation, leaping and building one’s own story – although from scattered elements. Social and technological transformation revealed / activated a form which became a place of dialogue and exchange of opinions; setting the hierarchy of values within a group, building and perceiving ethnic identity. A website as a symbol of culture co-creates it, becoming simultaneously its indication – a territory. On the one hand, it is a presentation and a showpiece of a community with its history, the main (exposed) components of cultural distinction placed on it, and, on the other hand, it performs the communicative functions of information exchange and of solving the current problems of a group. The virtual “drama“ of virtual “actors“ in a virtual space is a postulate model, a representation of the social panorama composed of parts resulting from feelings of identity, a desire to maintain group ties, and the memory of descent. It remains a fact that for some years now Karaims and Tatars have been redefining and recontextualizing their ethnic distinction with the help of interactive media, building – consciously or not – societies in the Internet.