The Impossibility of Society: Beyond Center-Periphery Relations in Turkey
Journal Title: insan & toplum - Year 2013, Vol 3, Issue 5
Abstract
Built on a critique of Serif Mardin’s center-periphery approach, this study offers a discursive approach to the study of Turkish politics. Resting on the belief that the society is transparent to itself, Mardin asserts that society can exhaust the social and is always composed of a center and a periphery. By deploying Ernesto Laclau’s discursive account of society, this study claims that society is not self-transparent; there is always a surplus of meaning in the social. Therefore, society consists solely of a center and its fate is tied on its success to monopolize the control of the center in the social. The advent of the political as a result of the emergence of alternative society-claim may threaten the existing social reality by revealing its contingency in representing the metaphorical totality of society. So from discourse theory perspective, political analysis should focus not on what society is but what prevents it from being. With this account of society, this study seeks to examine the rise and expansion of the Kemalist “society” as well as its dislocations owing to the emergence of other society-claims till the 1980s.
Authors and Affiliations
Ali Aslan
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP306335
- DOI 10.12658/human.society.3.5.M0057
- Views 95
- Downloads 0
Economic Growth and Unemployment in Turkey after 2001: Dynamics of Unemployment in Turkey
Turkish economy has experienced an economic transformation with the Program of Transition to Strong Economy (Güçlü Ekonomiye Geçiş Programı) which has been applied since 2001. Three basic features of Turkish economy attr...
Hegemonic Transformation in Religous Organisations From Nurculuk to Post-Nurculuk, Sociological Codes of Gulenist Structures from Community to Organisation
This essay aims to explain sociologically the transformation of the Gülenist community emerging as a religious group then an organizational structure through organizing in the public arena and gradually on to a hegemonic...
Türkiye’de Eğitim Alanında Çalışan STK’ların 4+4+4 Eğitim Sistemi Bağlamında Hazırladıkları Raporlarda Din Eğitimine Yaklaşımlarının Değerlendirilmesi
Eğitim; insanların ve toplumların şekillenmesinde ve değişmesinde en önemli araçlardan biridir. 21. yüzyılın hızla değişen dünyasında eğitim, bilginin üretilmesi, kullanılması ve aktarılmasının dinamiklerini oluşturarak,...
Beyond the Gas Trade: The Structural Determinants of Russo-Turkish Relations
The post-Cold War era has seen Russia and Turkey become close trading partners, mainly with regard to gas imported via the undersea Blue Stream pipeline. Such trade cooperation and the ensuing economic interdependence ha...
Az Gelişmişlik, Geri Kalmışlık ve Kalkınma: İsmail Cem Örneğinde 1960’lı Yıllarda Solun Tarih Kurgusu
İsmail Cem (1940-2007) is one of the prominent names of Turkish intellectual and political life. Although his political career drew great attention, evaluation of his intellectual output has always been in the shadow of...