The aim of this study is to draw attention to the fact that daily practices which tend to be overlooked due to their taken for grantedness actually signify power coming into existence here and now as well as that everyday problems bring along accordingly ordinary coping ways. In this respect, resistance in everyday life means a refusal that does not identify itself as political and organized, and who intends to make do with the rule by finding immediate and effective solutions to negative effects power generates rather than overtly challenging it. In order to render visible this type of resistance, to understand how it is experienced and perceived, the implementation of smoking ban in enclosed areas was covered in entertainment venues. Participant observations and semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted in Nevizade Street that is located in Beyoglu district of Istanbul and consists of meyhanes as well as beerhouses. Although customers resist based on pleasure principle, managers in order not to go bankrupt and employees not to fall out of work, it is concluded that what is thwarted here is not public health that the related law aims to protect but rather the troubles that the implementation of the law brings about.

This dissertation is a qualitative case study of women&rsquo / s political participation in local government in District Hyderabad, Pakistan from a feminist perspective. There is a longstanding patriarchal trend of elite women&rsquo / s selective political participation in Pakistan. But recently introduced local government system with increased quota (33%) for women brought a large mass of non-elite women in local politics. This research explores the social dynamics behind this changing pattern through semi-structured interviews with 53 elected women local councilors in the district. It argues that there is a dialectical relationship between patriarchy and women&rsquo / s political participation. It shows how patriarchal structures have reconfigured to enhance their interest by bringing non-elite women into politics for their power interest. The women, who entered politics, do not challenge the patriarchal structures / rather they use them as resources to facilitate their entry and survival in politics. This process has rendered somewhat of a compatible co-existence between these two antagonistic forces. Patriarchy has gained more modernized outlook while still retaining male domination. The non-elite women, although still controlled by and submissive to male domination, have gained ever broader legitimate space for their autonomous action. The research contributes to the debates concerning patriarchal transformation, arguing that certain features of patriarchy, when responding to accommodate new socio-political developments, gives rise to its own contradictions, thus potentially creating the conditions for overall societal change.

The aim of this thesis is to analyze Armenian ethnic identity construction, the dynamics influencing this process, and varying boundaries of this identity in Yesilk&ouml / y, which is one of the regions of Istanbul where Armenians prefer to live. The primordial as well as constructed aspects of Armenian identity in Turkey and the influence of objective and subjective definitions of Armenian collective identity constitutes the main themes of this thesis. From that perspective, homeland, history, myths, collective remembering, religion, language, rituals, the sense of being a member of a minority group, and perception of citizenship play a crucial role. Besides, relationalism, interaction with others, daily life practices, and relations with the nation-state appear as the other crucial elements of this identity construction process. Armenian identity in Turkey is multi-layered, situational and fluid. Together with the elements which provide the rigidity of identity such as religion, there are other loyalties such as ethnicity, traditions and language which give rise to plural and flexible identities. Armenian communities outside the national boundaries also serve for the self- positioning of the Armenians in Turkey.

The early marriage as a patriarchal cultural fact is not a retrospective solved up, ended issue but a problem lasting with all its tragedy. The early marriage which is the subject of this study is a form of actualisation of child abuse within the family, in the prison of privacy. This abuse may only be expressed within the repertoire of femaleness. Regarding this language, which is functionalized with destiny, fortune, luck, sin, immoral, the comprehension of what it means to be child-bride, how the patriarchy institutionalize the early marriage which we may call as legitimate child abuse was tried. If marriage occurs between persons either one of them or both of them is under 18 is called early marriage.Although child marriages are no legitimacy in the sense of jurisprudence, child marriage is still occurring as a cultural practice. This study based on some presumption such as everybody who is under the age of 18 is accepted as a child. Marriage is an important issue for feminism. Although there are different feminst perspectives, all of them are critical towards marriage. For instance / according to radical feminists&rsquo / theoreticians&rsquo / marriage is a systematic way of oppressing women hence being a child likely to intensified adverse consequences of marriage. The main concerns of this study how their child status affects their marriage experiences. In this frame work early marriaged studied based on a field research conducted on 19 women in Van province .In order to get diversity in Van, four districts were chosen. The scopes that women&rsquo / s marriage experiences are questioned are the following women&rsquo / s domestic labor, women participating in social life, violence against women, sexuality, motherhood and childcare. In order to get more insight about the issue 8 representatives of non governmental organizations and 10 public officials who interested in women issue are met.

This thesis examines the recent phenomenon of Atat&uuml / rk&rsquo / s tattoos through a twofold theoretical framework of body politics and secularism. Firstly, it examines the growing interest on the body in social sciences, which has focused on the body as a site of both docility and subversivity. Additionally, the body has been rediscovered as a fetish object through which selfhood and subjectivity are continually reconstructed and contested. These developments were simultaneously conditioned by and manifested themselves in an understanding of &lsquo / the body as a project&rsquo / . Secondly, the study explores Atat&uuml / rk&rsquo / s continued legacy in Turkish politics and for the nation-people. 73 years after his death, Atat&uuml / rk still remains the utmost personification of the secular Turkish nation state. An effort is made to demonstrate how &lsquo / the secular&rsquo / , representing the normative nation-identity, and &lsquo / the religious&rsquo / , representing its Other, have been made in Turkish history. In light of these theories, Atat&uuml / rk tattoo almost seems like an oxymoron: &lsquo / tattoo&rsquo / carrying controversial and rebellious, and &lsquo / Atat&uuml / rk&rsquo / statist and conformist undertones. The main ambition of this thesis is to explore this contradiction through an analysis of whether the Atat&uuml / rk tattoo is a spontaneous (body) politics on the side of &lsquo / the people&rsquo / or whether it is a symptom of Kemalism&rsquo / s current position in society and politics. Finally, to better understand the subject, field research has been conducted with tattoo artists and people with the Atat&uuml / rk tattoo, in 3 cities, through the summer and fall of 2010.

This study aims to ask what meaning the current users of Taksim Republican Square (TRS) in Istanbul attach to it, besides an understanding of the socio

This thesis aims to examine the representation of Turkey by the Italian newspapers in order to determine: a) if it is a stereotyped and ill-informed representation of Turkey, in parallel to the low level knowledge of the Italian public on Turkey / b) if there is a convergence among political agenda on Turkey and the media on Turkey / c) whether Islam is being inserted to the construction of Turkish perception by the Italian media. According to the Transatlantic Trends Surveys of the past years, it appears that the Italians have a confused image and limited knowledge of Turkey and its membership to the EU. On the political level, the government official position is supportive of Turkish membership into the EU. At the political party level, the opinions on this matter are diverse, principally depending on the political positions of the parties. This thesis argues that Turkey being Muslim-majority country, the perception of Islam plays an important role in shaping Turkish image in the Italians

The argument that the world has been witnessing a transformation from national developmentalism towards a new form of developmentalism especially after the 1980s has increasingly become more widespread in the development literature. Moreover, the concerned literature has recently been dominated by the provocative claim that the notion of development itself is no longer operational and meaningful. However, it is still very ambiguous as to how this new form of development which is primarily implemented by the hands of the international corporations and institutions rather than the nation-states is being conceptualized with regard to the existing models of development and how to name it. This dissertation advances the claim that the national developmentalism has given way to what will be called as the &lsquo / global developmentalism&rsquo / in this context and it operates through the notions of the locality and particularity, which are conceptual elements intrinsic to the global capitalism. This dissertation will also attempt to reveal that the logic of global developmentalism no longer depends on the main conceptual categories of the notion of development / thus it can no longer be regarded as a form of developmentalism. The field research of this dissertation involves the analysis of several major and minor projects which are thought to be implemented within either national developmentalism or global developmentalism, or intermediate forms between these two. This dissertation will advance a discussion on the transformation from national developmentalism to global developmentalism and make a discourse analysis of these two forms of developmentalism by interpreting the data obtained from the deep interviews with experts that have worked in these projects, the local inhabitants in the project-affected areas, and from analysis of the observable consequences of these projects.

This thesis mainly aims to understand how the realms of &ldquo / the political&rdquo / and &ldquo / nonpolitical&rdquo / are comprehended, defined and differentiated on the practice of volunteerism in civil society. This study is based on an ethnographic research conducted with people who are volunteering in a Non-Governmental Organization in Turkey working in the field of education. The data were collected through in-depth interviews and participant observation by following the volunteers who regularly visit the elementary schools in villages and Yatili Ilk&ouml / gretim B&ouml / lge Okullari (Regional Boarding Elementary Schools) in order to help school children. Volunteers&rsquo / strong emphasis on the construction of volunteer activity and political activity as opposing categories and their strategies and rules conducted for avoiding any political representation, their perception of politics as &ldquo / spoiled&rdquo / and useless and responsibilizing themselves for their target group constituted the grounds of this study. Basing on the data and following the Foucauldian concept of governmentality / it is argued that the idea &ldquo / non-politics&rdquo / is a new type of politics which is experienced in late liberalism. By prioritizing &ldquo / how&rdquo / questions, this study discusses how volunteerism and politics are defined and how individuals feel responsible for the tasks which were previously seen as duties of state.

The main research question of this thesis is &ldquo / How can HES (small scale hydroelectricity plant) opposition be analyzed in terms of social ecology?&rdquo / A second research question is raised to answer first one as &ldquo / How can any environmental action be analyzed in terms of social ecology?&rdquo / About ecological crisis, Murray Bookchin&rsquo / s social ecology develops strong criticism against liberal environmentalism, deep ecology and Marxism and provides an alternative radical social change as Libertarian Municipalism (LM). Social ecology criticizes environmentalism as legitimizing current status quo destroying nature and offers ecological approach for real solution. LM movement is a political program of social ecology to reach rational, ecological and democratic society that is domination free and so does not dominate nature. I developed a LM movement model from Janet Biehl&rsquo / s study and integrated this model into George Pepper&rsquo / s classification of environmentalism to reach a Classification Table (CT) that is based on social ecological principles. CT is an attempt to develop a tool to analyze all sorts of environmental activities according to social ecology. Implementation of CT at field study shows HES opposition has the desire of strict state controls and planning as significant aspects of welfare-liberal environmentalism. On the other hand, the common critique of central, urban, professional and fund dependent environmentalism of national ENGOs fits market-liberal environmentalism critique of LM model. The increasing demand to join decision-making mechanism, the bottom-to-top regional organization of local platforms and &ldquo / living space&rdquo / discourse show LM tendency. In fact, HES threat ignites participation demands of local people in Turkey.