Masal Dil Kürtçe, "Büyük Ülke" Türkiye, Yahut TRT 6*

*Bu yazı 23 Aralık 2010 tarihinde Birikim dergisi web portalında yayınlanmıştır.

Ahmet Alış

I.“Konuş, kim olduğunu söyleyeyim” (Sokrates)

Pierre Bourdieu, dilin, bir iletişim aracından öte, iktidar ve güç ilişkilerinin sürdürülmesinde önemli bir kültürel ve sembolik sermaye olduğunu haklı bir şekilde belirtmektedir. Sokrates’in iki bin dört yüz yıl önce ima ettiğine ve Bourdieu´nun söylediklerine ilaveten dil, bu kısa yazının dokunduğu boyutlarıyla bir açıdan, hayali toplumlardaki en büyük hayalet olarak da görülebilir. Ayrıca, milliyetçilik teorilerinin neredeyse hepsinde etnik farkındalık ve farklılık söylemlerinde dilin önemi oldukça fazla vurgulanmaktadır.

Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo and Early Modern Capitalism (1600–1800)

Nelly Hanna

Syracuse University Press

Little has been written about the economic history of Egypt prior to its incorporation into the European capitalist economy. While historians have mined archives and court documents to create a picture of the commercial activities, networks, and infrastructure of merchants during this time, few have documented a similar picture of the artisans and craftspeople. Artisans outnumbered merchants, and their economic weight was considerable, yet details about their lives, the way they carried out their work, and their role or position in the economy are largely unknown. Hanna seeks to redress this gap with Artisan Entrepreneurs in Cairo and Early Modern Capitalism (1600–1800) by locating and exploring the role of artisans in the historical process.

Offering richly detailed portraits as well as an overview of the Ottoman Empire’s economic landscape, Hanna incorporates artisans into the historical development of the period, portraying them in the context of their work, their families, and their social relations. These artisans developed a variety of capitalist practices, both as individuals and collectively in their guilds. Responding to the demands of expanding commercial environments in Egypt and Europe, artisans found ways to adapt both production techniques and the organization of production. Hanna details the ways in which artisans defied the constraints of the guilds and actively engaged in the markets of Europe, demonstrating how Egyptian artisan production was able to compete and survive in a landscape of growing European trade. 

Deftly synthesizing a wide range of economic and historical theory, Hanna reinvigorates the current scholarship on early Ottoman history and provides a persuasive challenge to the largely shallow perception of artisans’ role in Egypt’s economy.

http://www.syracuseuniversitypress.syr.edu/spring-2011/artisan-entrepreneurs.html

Sosyal Bilimci ve Dolmuş Şoförü*

*Bu yazı 11 Aralık 2010 tarihinde Bianet'te yayınlanmıştır.
Ayşecan Kartal Scifo
Sosyal bilim dışlayıcı bir dil kurmadığını zannederken bile "gerçek"le saha araştırmasında tanışmak, sokağa saha muamelesi yapmak, sokağı akademiden, sokağı diğer her yerden ayırmak başka türlü bir hiyerarşi kurmuyor mu? Peki o zaman sosyal bilim ne işe yarar?

The League of Nations' Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920–1927

Watenpaugh, Keith David. 2010. The League of Nations' Rescue of Armenian Genocide Survivors and the Making of Modern Humanitarianism, 1920–1927. The American Historical Review 115 (5):1315-1339.

The essay centers on the efforts by the League of Nations to rescue women and children survivors of the 1915 Armenian Genocide. This rescue -- a seemingly unambiguous good -- was at once a constitutive act in drawing the boundaries of the international community, a key moment in the definition of humanitarianism, and a site of resistance to the colonial presence in the post-Ottoman Eastern Mediterranean. Drawing from a wide range of source materials in a number of languages, including Turkish, Armenian, and Arabic, the essay brings the intellectual and social context of humanitarianism in initiating societies together with the lived experience of humanitarianism in the places where the act took form. In so doing, it draws our attention to the proper place of the Eastern Mediterranean, and its women and children, in the global history of humanitarianism. The prevailing narrative of the history of human rights places much of its emphasis on the post–World War II era, the international reaction to the Holocaust, and the founding of the United Nations.

Syria and Bilad al-Sham under Ottoman Rule: Essays in honour of Abdul Karim Rafeq

Edited by Peter Sluglett with Stefan Weber
Brill

This volume honours the work of Abdul-Karim Rafeq, the foremost historian of Ottoman Syria. Rafeq’s principal contribution to the study of the social history of Syria between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries lies in his pioneering use of the resources of the Islamic court records, the sijillāt in the maḥkama al-sharʿiyya, for the writing of social and economic history. Rafeq has been the guide and mentor of many of his own contemporaries, as well as of younger scholars in the Arab world, Europe and North America. The volume attempts to follow and complement the major themes in the socio-economic history of Bilad al-Sham which have animated Rafeq’s scholarship since the 1960s.


http://www.brill.nl/default.aspx?partid=210&pid=22688

Turkey's Kurds: A Theoretical Analysis of the PKK and Abdullah Ocalan

Ali Kemal Özcan
Routledge

The Kurdish Worker's Party (PKK) is examined here in this text on Kurdish nationalism. Incorporating recent field-based research results and newly translated material on Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK's long-time leader; it explores the nature and the organizational working of the party, from its growth in the late 1970s to its recent shrinkage. A variety of issues are addressed including:

* the views and philosophy of Abdullah Ocalan

* the successes and failures of the PKK in bringing about the Kurdish opposition in Turkey

* the role of PKK's philosophy of recruitment, organizational diligence, use of arms and other contextual factors in Kurdish resistance

* factors involved in the development of the nationalism of the Kurds in Turkey.

The text also reappraises the Kurdish movement in Turkey and presents insights into the nature of Kurdish social structure, thinking, and the particularities of the Kurdish ethnic distinctness.

Kemalism in Turkish Politics: The Republican People's Party, Secularism and Nationalism

Sinan Ciddi
Routledge

This book is concerned with Turkey’s political evolution, the role of Kemalism, and why a social democratic alternative has never fully developed. Concentrating on the electoral weaknesses of the Turkish centre-left, represented by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Sinan Ciddi examines the roles of nationalism and the political establishment and the role of Kemalist ideology.

Established by Kemal Ataturk, the CHP is seen to be the founding party of modern Turkey. Kemalism sought to create a secular and democratic society based on the principles of republicanism, populism, secularism, nationalism and revolutionism. Although this leftist ideology became an integral part of Turkish politics by the early 1960s, it has remained a comparatively weak representative movement. Its strong ideological stance advocates an authoritarian and exclusionary position, particularly in relation to matters such as multiculturalism and democratisation, fuelling many debates concerning the role of religion and nationalism within Turkey and perpetuating elements of xenophobia and intolerance.

This book will be of interest to students of politics, history and current affairs, and of Turkish politics in particular.

The Epistemology of Ibn Khaldun

Zaid Ahmad
Routledge

This is an analytical examination of Ibn Khaldun's epistemology, centred on Chapter Six of the Muqaddima. In this chapter, entitled The Book of Knowledge (Kitab al'Ilm), Ibn Khaldun sketched his general ideas about knowledge and science and its relationship with human social organisation and the establishment of a civilisation.

http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415612753/

The History of the Seljuq State

Edited by Clifford Edmund Bosworth
Routledge

The Akhbar al-dawla al-saljuqiyya is one of the key primary documents on the history of Western Persia and Iraq in the 11th and 12th centuries. This book provides an accessible English translation and commentary on the text, making available to a new readership this significant work on the pre-modern history of the Middle East and the Turkish peoples.

The text is a chronicle of the Seljuq dynasty as it emerged within the Iranian lands in the 11th and 12th centuries, dominating the Middle Eastern lands, from Turkey and Syria to Iran and eastern Afghanistan. During this formative period in the central and eastern Islamic lands, they inaugurated a pattern of Turkish political and military dominance of the Middle East and beyond, from Egypt to India, in some cases well into the 20th century.

Shedding light on many otherwise obscure aspects of the political history of the region, the book provides a more detailed context for the political history of the wider area. As such, it will be of great interest to scholars of Middle Eastern history and is an important addition to the existing literature on the Seljuq dynasty.

Preface and Acknowledgements
1. Introduction
2. Translation of the text.
Bibliography

Race and Slavery in the Middle East: Histories of Trans-Saharan Africans in Nineteenth-Century Egypt, Sudan, and the Ottoman Empire

Edited by Terence Walz and Kenneth M. Cuno
American University in Cairo Press

New sources and research illuminate the individual lives of African slaves in the Middle East In the nineteenth century hundreds of thousands of Africans were forcibly migrated northward to Egypt and other eastern Mediterranean destinations, yet relatively little is known about them. Studies have focused mainly on the mamluk and harem slaves of elite households, who were mostly white, and on abolitionist efforts to end the slave trade, and most have relied heavily on western language sources. In the past forty years new sources have become available, ranging from Egyptian religious and civil court and police records to rediscovered archives and accounts in western archives and libraries. Along with new developments in the study of African slavery these sources provide a perspective on the lives of non-elite trans-Saharan Africans in nineteenth century Egypt and beyond. The nine essays in this volume examine the lives of slaves and freed men and women in Egypt and the region. Contributors: Kenneth M. Cuno, Y. Hakan Erdem, Michael Ferguson, Emad Ahmad Helal Shams al-Din, Liat Kozma, George Michael La Rue, Ahmad A. Sikainga, Eve M. Troutt Powell, and Terence Walz.