CSHS 507 Selected Topics on Turkish State and Society

Spring 2009

Instructor: Deniz Yükseker

Class: SOS Z22 Time: 14:15-17:00

Course web page: available on Courseware (through KUAIS)

Office: SOS254, phone: x 1309

Office hours: Wednesday 11:00-12:30, Thursday 14:30-16:00, and by appointment

Course Description: This course introduces a number of themes in the study of Turkish society from sociological, anthropological and political economy perspectives. Rather than canvassing an exhaustive list of topics, our goal in this course will be to examine different approaches on state-society relations, economic life, gender, and the Kurdish question. While doing this, we will sometimes contextualize Turkish experiences within broader conceptual and regional frameworks.

Course Requirements: Regular attendance, active participation, keeping up with the readings and timely fulfillment of all assignments are essential for your success in this course. Evaluation will be based on five reading responses and presentations (10 percent each) and a final paper (50 percent).

Important Note: Koç University and Sociology Department guidelines on academic integrity apply. (See course web page for details.)

COURSE SCHEDULE

Week 1: 10 February

INTRODUCTION

Week 2: 17 February

THE INSIDE AND THE OUTSIDE: CONSTRUCTIONS OF MEMBERSHIP

Tanıl Bora, “İnşa Döneminde Türk Milli Kimliği,” Toplum ve Bilim, no. 71, 1996 (on courseware)

Mesut Yeğen, “Citizenship and Ethnicity in Turkey,” Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 40, no. 5,

2004: 682-708 (on courseware).

Nükhet Sirman, “The Making of Familial Citizenship in Turkey” in Citizenship in a

Global World – European Questions and Turkish Experiences, eds. Fuat Keyman and Ahmet

İçduygu, London: Routledge, 2005: 147-172.

Ayşe Buğra, “Poverty and Citizenship: An Overview of the Social-Policy Environment in Republican Turkey,” IJMES, vol. 39, 2007: 33-57 (on courseware)

Optional: Cenk Saraçoğlu “‘Exclusive Recognition’: The New Dimensions of the Question of Ethnicity and Nationalism in Turkey” Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2008, 1-19 (on courseware)

Week 3: 24 February

FORGETTING AND REMEMBERING

Meltem Ahıska, “Occidentalism and Registers of Truth: The Politics of Archives in

Turkey,” NPT, no. 34, 2006: 9-30 (on courseware)

Biray Kolluoğlu Kırlı, “Forgetting the Smyrna Fire”, HWJ, no. 60, 2005: 25-44 (on courseware).

Zerrin Özlem Biner, “Retrieving the Dignity of a Cosmopolitan City: Contested

Perspectives on Rights, Culture and Ethnicity in Mardin” NPT, no. 37, 2007, 31-58. (on courseware)

Cihan Tuğal, “Memories of Violence, Memoirs of Nation. The 1915 Massacres and the Construction of Identity” in The Politics of Public Memory in Turkey, 2007, ed. Esra Özyürek, Syracuse University Press, 138-161.

Week 4: 3 March

STATE ETHNOGRAPHIES

Yael Navaro-Yashin: chapters 4 and 5 in Faces of the State. Secularism and Public Life in Turkey, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002: 1-16 and 117-187.

Yael Navaro-Yashin (2006) “Affect in the Civil Service: a Study of a

Modern State-System” Postcolonial Studies, vol.9, no.3, 281-294 (on Courseware).

Aradhana Sharma and Akhil Gupta, “Introduction: Rethinking Theories of the State in an Age of Globalization” in A. Sharma and Akhil Gupta, eds. The Anthropology of the State. A Reader, 2006, London: Blackwell.

Akhil Gupta. “Blurred Boundaries: The Discourse of Corruption, the Culture of Politics, and the Imagined State” American Ethnologist, vol. 22, no. 2, May 2005: 375-402 (on courseware).

Week 5: 10 March

STATECRAFT AND VIOLENCE

Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-Politics, and Modernity, Berkeley: University of California Press, Introduction, chapter 1

Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski, “Introduction: States of Violence and the Violence of States” in States of Violence, eds. Fernando Coronil and Julie Skurski, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006: 1-31.

Lars Buur, “The South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission: A Technique of Nation-State formation” in States of Imagination, eds. Thomas Blom Hansen and Finn Stepputat, 2001, Duke University Press, 149-181.

*Neve Gordon, Israel’s Occupation, 2008, Berkeley, University of California Press, chapters tba (*depending on the availability of book)

Week 6: 17 March

STUDYING THE KURDISH ISSUE

Mesut Yeğen, “The Kurdish Question in Turkish State Discourse,” Journal of Contemporary History, Vol.34, No.4, October 1999: 555-568 (on courseware)

Mesut Yeğen, “Turkish Nationalism and the Kurdish Question” Ethnic and Racial Studies, vol. 30, no.1, 119-151 (on courseware)

Bilgin Ayata and Deniz Yükseker, “A Belated Awakening: National and International Responses to the Internal Displacement of Kurds in Turkey,” NPT, no. 35, 2005: 5-42 (on courseware)

Handan Çağlayan. 2008. “Voices from the periphery of the periphery: Kurdish women's political participation in Turkey” conference paper (on courseware)

Handan Çağlayan. 2009. “Ekonomi-Politik Perspektiften Türkiye’de Kürt Muhalefetinin Dönüşümü” in Tülin Öngen, M. Kemal Coşkun (eds.) Kapitalizmin Yeniden Yapılanması: Kuramsal Yöntemsel ve Pratik Boyut, Ankara: Dipnot Yayınevi

(in press)

Week 7: 24 March

RURAL TRANSFORMATION, MIGRATION AND URBANIZATION

Bahattin Akşit, “Studies in Rural Transformation in Turkey 1950-1990” in Culture and Economy. Changes in Turkish Villages, 1993, (ed.) Paul Stirling, Eothen Press, 187-200.

Çağlar Keyder, “The Genesis of Petty Commodity Production in Agriculture. The Case of Turkey” in Culture and Economy. Changes in Turkish Villages. 1993, (ed.) Paul Stirling, Eothen Press, 171-186.

Nükhet Sirman, “Sosyal Bilimlerde Gelişmecilik ve Köy Çalışmaları” Toplum ve Bilim, no. 88, 251-254.

Ayşe Öncü, “The Politics of the Urban Land Market in Turkey. 1950-1980” IJURR, 1988, vol. 12, no.1, 38-64.

Week 8: 31 March

SOCIAL CHANGE UNDER NEOLIBERALISM

Ümit Cizre and Erinç Yeldan. (2005). “The Turkish Encounter with Neo-Liberalism: Economics and Politics in the 2000/2001 Crises.” Review of International Political Economy, vol. 12, no. 3: 387-408 (on courseware).

Ali Murat Özdemir and Gamze Yücesan-Özdemir, “Labor Law Reform in Turkey in the 2000s. The Devil is not just in the Details but also in the Legal Texts,” Economic and Industrial Democracy, 2006, no. 27: 311-331 (on courseware).

Ayfer Bartu Candan and Biray Kolluoğlu (2008) “Emerging Spaces of Neoliberalism: A Gated Town and a Public Housing Project in İstanbul” New Perspectives on Turkey, no. 39, 5-46 (on courseware).

Zülküf Aydın, “The New Right, Structural Adjustment and Turkish Agriculture. Rural Responses and Survival Strategies” European Journal of Development Research, 2002, vol. 14, no. 2, 183-208 (on courseware)

Spring Break (April 6-10)

Week 9: 14 April

NEOLIBERAL GLOBALIZATION AND GOVERNANCE

David Harvey, “The Neoliberal State” and “Neoliberalism on Trial” in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 2005, Oxford University Press, 64-86 and 152-182.

Elizabeth C. Dunn, “Standards and Person-Making in East Central Europe,” in Global Assemblages. Technology, Politics and Ethics as Anthropological Problems, 2005, Blackwell, 173-193.

James Ferguson, “Globalizing Africa? Observations from an Inconvenient Continent” and “Transnational Topographies of Power: Beyond “the State” and “Civil Society” in the Study of African Politics” in Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order, 2006, Duke University Press, 25-49 and 89-112.

Week 10: 21 April

ETHNOGRAPHIES OF NEOLIBERALISM

Julia Elyachar, Markets of Dispossession. NGOs, Economic Development, and the State in Cairo, 2005, Durham: Duke University Press, chapters 1 and 6

Michael Goldman, Imperial Nature. The World Bank and Social Justice in an Age of Globalization, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005: chapters 1 and 6 (available as an e-book)

Week 11: 28 April

GENDER AND WORK IN TURKEY

Ferhunde Özbay, “Evlerde Elkızları: Cariyeler, Evlatlıklar, Gelinler,” Feminist Tarihyazımında Sınıf ve Cinsiyet, eds. Leonore Davidoff and Ayşe Durakbaşa, 2002, İstanbul: İletişim (on courseware)

Tahire Erman, Sibel Kalaycıoğlu and Helga Rittersberger-Tılıç, “Money-Earning Activities and Empowerment Experiences of Rural Migrant Women in the City. The Case of Turkey” women’s Studies International Forum, 2002, vol. 25, no.4, 395-410 (on courseware)

Ayşe Akalın, “Hired as a Caregiver, Demanded as a Housewife: Becoming a Migrant Domestic Worker in Turkey” European Journal of Women’s Studies, 2007, vol. 13, no.3, 209-225 (on courseware).

Aksu Bora, Kadınların Sınıfı, 2008 (2nd ed.), Istanbul, İletişim Yayınları, chapters tba

Week 12: 5 May

GENDER AND VIOLENCE

Ayşe Gül Altınay, The Myth of the Military Nation, chapters 1 and 2, 13-58.

Dicle Koğacıoğlu, “Gelenek Söylemleri ve İktidarın Doğallaşması: Namus Cinayetleri Örneği,” Kültür ve Siyasette Feminist Yaklaşımlar, No.3, June 2007 (on Courseware)

Nükhet Sirman, “Kinship, Politics, and Love: Honour in Post-Colonial Contexts–The Case of Turkey” in Violence in the Name of Honour. Theoretical and Political Challenges. Eds. Shahrzad Mojab and Nahla Abdo, 2004, Bilgi University Press, 39-56

Week 13: 12 May

STUDYING THE ISLAMIST MOVEMENT

Cihan Tuğal: “The Greening of Istanbul,” NLR, no. 51, May-June 2008, pp. 65-80 (on Courseware)

*Cihan Tuğal, Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism, 2009, Stanford University Press (*depending on the availability of the book)

Brian Silverstein, “Islamist Critique in Modern Turkey: Hermeneutics, Tradition, Genealogy”

Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2005, 134-160 (on courseware)

No class on 19 May

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