The Ambivalent political agency of intellectual religious women in turkey: a case study of the abortion debate in 2012

Download

index.pdf

Date

2015

Author

Özcan, Tuğba

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

238
views

79
downloads

This thesis attempts at providing a critical evaluation of Universalist Eurocentric conceptualization of agency. Taking the abortion debate in 2012 in Turkey as an empirical case, the thesis analyzes the statements of religious women who are publicly known to be intellectuals. Abortion debate is commentated around pro and con positions towards the abortion issue, which are reflected in the wider dichotomous categories of secularism and religiosity. Within this framework, Islamic discourse is taken nothing but patriarchal, and agency is assigned only on the part of resistance against this discourse. With an analysis of the statements of intellectual religious women, following the problematizations of Michel Foucault, Saba Mahmood, Asef Bayat, Chandra Mohanty, and Homi Bhabha, this thesis claims that agency cannot be reduced to resistance. For that purpose, three approaches to this notion is analyzed: compliant agency, pious critical agency and ‘devoted resistance’ approach to agency.

Subject Keywords

Women, Women, Women, Women

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/12618750/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/24650

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Changing discourse on women and islam in Turkey in ethnographic studies Onur, Petek; Saktanber, Ayşe Nur; Department of Sociology (2016) This thesis provides an analysis of the change of ethnographic discourse on women and Islam in Turkey. Based on the theoretical framework of feminist postcolonial theory it analyses the ethnographic studies as texts and focuses on the concepts of subjectivity, subalternnes, otherness, and agency in Muslim women's discursive representations and binarism, Eurocentricism, essentialism in the way discourse is produced. It adopts Michel Foucault’s theorization of discourse, knowledge and power as a methodology t...
Patriarchal structures and practices in Turkey : the case of social realist and national films of 1960s Yeşildal Şen, Hatice; Ecevit, Mehmet Cihan; Department of Sociology (2005) This thesis highlights the significance of patriarchal structures and their reproduction in women̕s social position through the feminist perspective. Patriarchy is a dominant structure both on production and reproduction sphere. Patriarchy, which is a dominant structure in every sphere of social life has material basis and controls both women̕s labour and sexuality. With this framework some concepts such as the types of women̕s labour, paid and domestic labour, family, honour, violence and masculinity are u...
Women’s writings under state feminism in Turkey: an analysis of “Kadın gazetesi” from 1947 to 1960 / Güngör, Melike; Çırakman Deveci, Aslı; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2016) This thesis analyzes a woman’s journal called ‘Kadın Gazetesi’ in relation with the concept of state feminism. The study is based on an analysis of the issues of the journal published from 1947 to 1960. This thesis investigates how the journal described the images of women in relation to the prevailing hegemonic discourse on womanhood. Thus, the main intention of the study is to discuss the meanings of women’s portrayals in the journal with historical changes resulted to the dominant effect of state feminis...
Muslim women in Central Asia : the impact of soviet legacy Öz, Özge; Akçalı, Pınar; Department of Eurasian Studies (2013) This thesis analyzes the pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia from a historical perspective to understand the impact of the Soviet regime on Muslim women’s lifestyles. It specifically focuses on the underlying reasons of laws and policies put into effect by the Soviet officials in the name of emancipating Muslim women in Central Asia. The main argument of the thesis is that even though the Soviet officials had a genuine intention for the emancipation of Central Asian women from the patriarchal st...
Femicide in Turkey: a descriptive and critical study based on news texts of incidents of femicide in 2009 Güngör, Derya; Acar, Ayşe Feride; Department of Sociology (2012) The purpose of the study is to develop both a descriptive and critical understanding towards the phenomenon of femicide in Turkey. First, the answers to the questions who commits femicide, where it takes place, what the ages of the victims and perpetrators are, in what ways femicide is committed and what are the 'reasons' of committing femicide will be revealed through news reports of incidents of femicide. Second, the news texts of incidents of femicide will be analyzed based on the framework of Feminist C...

Citation Formats

T. Özcan, “The Ambivalent political agency of intellectual religious women in turkey: a case study of the abortion debate in 2012,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2015.