Winner of the William A. Douglass Prize in Europeanist Anthropology
The emergence of an Islamist movement and the startling buoyancy of
Islamic political parties in Turkey--a model of secular
modernization, a cosmopolitan frontier, and NATO ally--has puzzled
Western observers. As the appeal of the Islamist Welfare Party
spread through Turkish society, including the middle class, in the
1990s, the party won numerous local elections and became one of the
largest parties represented in parliament, even holding the prime
ministership in 1996 and 1997. Welfare was formally banned and
closed in 1998, and its successor, Virtue, was banned in 2001, for
allegedly posing a threat to the state, but the Islamist movement
continues to grow in popularity. Jenny White has produced an
ethnography of contemporary Istanbul that charts the success of
Islamist mobilization through the eyes of ordinary people. Drawing
on neighborhood interviews gathered over twenty years of fieldwork,
she focuses intently on the genesis and continuing appeal of
Islamic politics in the fabric of Turkish society and among
mobilizing and mobilized elites, women, and educated populations.
White shows how everyday concerns and interpersonal relations,
rather than Islamic dogma, helped Welfare gain access to community
networks, building on continuing face-to-face relationships by way
of interactions with constituents through trusted neighbors. She
argues that Islamic political networks are based on cultural
understandings of relationships, duties, and trust. She also
illustrates how Islamic activists have sustained cohesion despite
contradictory agendas and beliefs, and how civic organizations,
through local relationships, have ensured the autonomy of these
networks from the national political organizations in whose service
they appear to act. To illuminate the local culture of Istanbul,
White has interviewed residents, activists, party officials, and
municipal administrators and participated in their activities. She
draws on rich experiences and research made possible by years of
firsthand observation in the streets and homes of Umraniye, a large
neighborhood that grew in tandem with Turkey's modernization in the
late 20th century. This book will appeal to anthropologists,
sociologists, historians, and analysts of Islamic and Middle
Eastern politics.
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