The cultural dilemmas of uneven and combined development (UCD): ‘the biggest agony of the Turkish spirit’

Date

2023-01-01

Author

Yalvaç, Faruk
Akcalı Yılmaz, Öznur

Metadata

Show full item record

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Item Usage Stats

255
views

0
downloads

Recent studies of international historical sociology have focused more on the interaction between the political and economic aspects of the world system compared to its cultural dimensions. In this article we want to address this lacuna with particular reference to the theory of Uneven and Combined Development (UCD here after). UCD is an attempt to develop a non-Eurocentric, non-linear, and historical understanding of international relations. It aims to provide a non-Eurocentric historiography and historical sociology that goes beyond binary oppositions of East and West, tradition and modernity, and emphasizes non-Western agency in shaping historical developments. The cultural implications of UCD has recently been revived in world literature and cultural studies. We seek to contribute to this research by illustrating how UCD can help us understand the cultural implications of societal interaction through the use of Turkish literature, notably Peyami Safa’s work. We want to focus on the theme of the interaction between the West and the East in his work within the context of the theory of UCD as an example of how it manifests itself in the cultural field. Accordingly, the article is structured as follows. The first section discusses the key features of UCD as they relate to our topic, and the second section goes on to examine processes of Westernisation as they have occurred in Turkey and attempts to demonstrate how UCD is reflected in the literature of the period. The third section aims to show how the concept of UCD can help us better understand the implications of societal interaction in Peyami Safa’s work by addressing the various issues that are raised in Justin Rosenberg’s approach to analysing world literature. The final section concludes with general observations concerning the potential utility of UCD-based methodologies in constituting the foundation of non-Western IR theories.

URI

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85146998763&origin=inward
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/102275

Journal

Cambridge Review of International Affairs

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1080/09557571.2023.2170871

Collections

Department of International Relations, Article

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

The Rise and decline of ethnic mobilization and sovereignty in Tatarstan Dinç, Deniz; Şen, Mustafa; Kuşçu Bonnenfant, Işık; Department of International Relations (2017) This thesis analyzes the rise and decline of the intertwined concepts of ethnic mobilization and sovereignty in the case of Tatarstan. The rise and fall of the ethnic revival of the Tatars is examined within a micro perspective as a part of the ongoing concept of autonomous sovereignty. The post-Soviet sovereignty experience of Tatarstan is evaluated within a macro chronological perspective taking the concept of state capacity into account. Research findings of this study reveal that the ethno-national nome...
The making of a 'city of culture' : restructuring Antalya Varlı-Görk, Reyhan; Nalbantoğlu, Hasan Ünal; Department of Sociology (2010) This study tries to identify agencies’ strategies in the ‘urban restructuring’ of Antalya into a ‘city of culture’ by examining the underlying relation between urban cultural policies and global capitalism. Pursuing the relational thinking of the Marxist urban political economy paradigm, the theoretical frames for the concepts of ‘restructuring’ and ‘city of culture’ were investigated using multi-dimensional approaches of existing scholarly literature. Since the concept ‘city of culture’ involves growth ori...
The ‘Tulip Revolution’ and the role of informal dynamics in Kyrgyz politics Yandaş, Osman Gökhan; Tanrısever, Oktay Fırat; Department of International Relations (2011) This dissertation aims to uncover the main parameters, the decisive dynamics within Kyrgyz politics not only through an examination of the socio-political context of post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan, but also through an analysis of the events that came to be known as the ‘Tulip Revolution’. It examines the general and immediate contexts, course of events, dynamics and implications of the ‘Tulip Revolution’ in order to understand what kind of dynamics account for the continuing instability in Kyrgyzstan in its afterma...
The evolution of the idea of development: From developmentalism to financialisation in a comparative perspective Kaynak , Mehtap Tuğba; Göksel, Asuman; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2020-10-29) This thesis has attempted to show the evolution of the idea of developmentalism starting from the early ideas of developmentalism in 16th century and continuing with the analysis of developmental state from the end of the Second World War to the early 21st century. As the contours of developmentalism shifted from economic protectionism in the 1950s to market liberalisation in the 1980s, there has been a growing literature aiming at revitalizing the role of the state in social and economic transformation in ...
The reconstruction of europe from post-ww ii to post-cold war Atılgan, Yonca; Yurdusev, Ahmet Nuri; Department of European Studies (2008) The reconstruction of Europe’ is a subject covering a quite long period that has seen various outstanding historical events changing the geography and power distribution in Europe, and in the politics of international relations within a general framework. This study underlines the impact of geopolitical setting in the post-WW II and the post-Cold War periods to understand the acts of actors and related outcomes in the reconstruction of Europe. By the comparison of reconstructive acts and ingredients of the ...

Citation Formats

F. Yalvaç and Ö. Akcalı Yılmaz, “The cultural dilemmas of uneven and combined development (UCD): ‘the biggest agony of the Turkish spirit’,” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, pp. 0–0, 2023, Accessed: 00, 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=85146998763&origin=inward.