Browsing by Subject "Modernisation"

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Open Access
Against its modernist grounds: rethinking clientelism
(2001) Sargın, Ayşe
This thesis is an attempt to highlight an arbitrariness and vagueness in the academic usage of the concept of clientelism. It is argued that these deficiencies in the usage of the concept arise from a bias inherent to its very definition within the framework of the modernisation theory's thinking back in the 1950s and 1960s. Clientelism first emerged as a tool of analysis in the anthropological studies of small traditional communities. Later it was transported to political science to be used in the study of the politics of "developing" societies. These societies had institutions such as bureaucracies and political parties, which were "modern" institutions in terms of definition but which, functioned differently from their counterparts in the societies of the West. Clientelistic model was utilised by political scientists mainly to account for this deviation. Even in contemporary studies, scholars of clientelism tend to view clientelism as essentially a feature of the non-modern societies despite studies which acknowledge its existence in societies with various levels of development. In this thesis we explore and problematise the roots of the concept of clientelism in modernisation thinking and the evolution of it from anthropological studies to political science. We also investigate the perception of clientelism by the students of Turkish politics to provide an example to this bias. Turkish studies of clientelism are marked by a vague use of the concept; not all similar political behaviors and processes are identified as clientelistic, while those political behaviors and processes that are accepted as legitimate parts of the political system in another society, are condemned as clientelistic in these studies. This thesis argues that this arbitrary and vague use of the concept in Turkish studies arises from the particular state-society articulation in Turkish society understood as a cleavage between the "modern" center and the "traditional" periphery. A study of the state society interaction in the American political system is provided to highlight the difference between the two societies.
Open Access
Fahri Celalettin Göktulga'nın öykülerinde anomi ve geçmişe kaçış
(2003) Aydın, Bilgen
Fahri Celâlettin Göktulga (1895-1975) is a short story writer of a transitional period that started in the II. Meşrutiyet period (Constitutional Monarchy, 1908) and lasted until the end of the one-party era (1950). Göktulga, whose major profession was psychiatry, projected the “anomie” experienced by the Ottoman society which hesitated between “traditional values” and “new values” coming from the West in the framework of male-female relations and focused especially on “human psychology”. It is nearly impossible to encounter another Turkish short story writer who is interested in human psychology as professionally and insistently as Göktulga among the first generation of short story writers of the Republican era. However, Göktulga, who can be seen as the “ring” that connects Ömer Seyfettin to Memduh Şevket Esendal in Turkish short story, is one of the writers who were not sufficiently appreciated in Turkish literature. Göktulga’s effort to reveal psychological struggles and moods sets his stories apart from Memduh Şevket Esendal’s, which were in many ways similar to Göktulga’s stories. Göktulga’s stories bear resemblances to the Russian Anton Chekhov’s work. Göktulga, who wrote about eighty short stories and hundreds of short columns during his life, did his best to discriminate between his identities as psychiatrist and short story writer. As a matter of fact, his short story universe was shaped by his artistic identity more than the psychiatrist one. In Göktulga’s short stories, which were written from a masculine point of view, there are “strange twists” and “unexpected ends”, experienced when male protagonists as representatives of “traditional values” are confronted in public by female protagonists as representatives of “new values”. In this way, the collective schizophrenia experienced by the society during the modernisation process is expressed on an individual plane. As for the males, whose dominant positions are shaken by the threatening existence of women—“the other”—in the public area, find solutions by escaping into the past.