Full Description
This open access book draws on ethnographic research conducted in empowerment programmes for marginalized women, in the Southeast Anatolia region, to understand how these projects operate and why they have failed. Based on interviews and observations, the book argues that everyday barriers in Turkey's 'gendered regime' still impede women's potential, and that the programmes' own feminist agendas are undermined through their capitalist ethos of personal growth and culturalist reasoning. Particularly revealing is the state's large-scale regional development project, the 'Southeast Anatolia Project', which is the priortiy and ultimately facilitates women's structural exclusion. Situating the ongoing empowerment programmes within the larger social engineering project of the Republic of Turkey - which is long associated with emancipating women through top-down measures - this book highlights the repetition of failure in women's liberation in the history of the country.
The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Contents
Introduction: The Continuity of the Gender Regime
Genealogy of a Rhetoric: Empowerment
Culturalist Foundations of Progress
Times of Hope: Context of the Research
An Ethnography of Women's Praxis: Notes on Methods
Organisation of the Book
PART I - THE 'SECOND' HOME: Defining Women's Place
1. Creating Public(s) in (Re)public(s)
Kemalist Vision of Emancipation: Girls' Institutes
GAP's Vision of Empowerment: Multi-Purpose Community Centres
Erdogan's Vision of Rehabilitation: Family Support Centres
2. Alternative Opportunities
Meanings of Education through Life Stories
Halime: "I am not interested"
Aylin: "I have bigger dreams"
Breadwinner Housewives
Becoming Professionals: Ilknur and Tugba
Dreams of Entrepreneurship
Part II - EMPTY GESTURES: Politics and Expansion of the Party
3. Streams in Mainstreaming
'Add-Women-and-Stir' Tourism
A Non-Position in Local Bureaucracy: Mrs. Governor
"Rowing Against Tsunami"
4. Participation without Us
Efsun's Disappointment: Politics without Critique
Sibel's Objection to Family: Symbolic Representation in AKP
Expansion of Government in Women's Praxis: Multiple Belongings, Conflicting Statements
Part III - ONE NEEDLE MANY THREADS: Self-Making Through Women's Praxis
5. A Project of One's Own
Selectively Available Funds
A Leader Woman: Life and Words of Aliye
Resisting Male Resistance
6. Building Awareness
"Burning Anger"
Differences Negotiated (or Not)
Hazal's Pieces: Afterlife of Workshops
Conclusion
