Rethinking Power in Turkey through Everyday Practices
Abstract
In an increasingly authoritarian Turkish context that precludes any
serious chance of making tangible political gains, challenging common conception
of ‘the political’ may expand our understanding of power dynamics. Attempting
to track power relations outside the most official, legitimate, conventional and
formalised forms of politics provides alternative and sharper insights into how the
political is being reframed and how actors retain, uphold, perpetuate or transform
their capacity for agency. In an interdisciplinary perspective, but drawing mainly
on anthropological literature and methodology, the issue addresses four questions
– both empirically in the Turkish case and more conceptually: politicisation,
visibility, social stratification and domination.