Thesis (Ph. D.)--UCLA, 2009. / Vita. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 522-552).

This thesis investigates the contested processes of displaying “Turkishness” in competing state museums in Turkey at a time when over the last decade secularist- Kemalist state power has been overturned under neo-Islamist Justice and Development Party government. It poses the question: how are the oppositionary - namely secular Republican and Islamic Ottoman - pasts of “Turkishness” remembered, forgotten, and negotiated in Anıtkabir, Atatürk’s mausoleum, and Topkapı Palace Museum, the imperial house at a time of flux in Turkey? Anıtkabir, under the command of the Turkish Armed Forces, the guardian of secularism, and Topkapı Palace, linked to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, an arm of the government, are more than pedagogical warehouses of the state, displaying contending pasts. They are state institutions, endowed with diverse power sources in exhibiting the binaries of “Turkishness” polarised between West-modern-secular and East-backward-Islam. Through an ethnography of these agencies of the state, this research traces the negotiation processes of exhibiting the competing pasts of “Turkishness”. The focus of this study is twofold. First, it explores how different bureaucratic practices in Anıtkabir and Topkapı Palace museums act as power mechanisms among museum staff and vis-à-vis visitors. Second, it looks at the ensuing representations of “Turkishness”. Competing traditions and national days pertaining to Islamic Ottoman and secular Republican histories are re-invented through museum events, which fall beyond the bureaucracy of exhibition-making. However, formal / informal processes of exhibition-making in both museums reveal that binaries of “Turkishness” are challenged and deliberated through contested exhibitionary practices. In Topkapı Palace Museum, a Westernised-modernised image of imperial life is portrayed, while Anıtkabir simultaneously re-sacralises and humanises Atatürk’s cult. Therefore, this study argues that binaries of “Turkishness” are not irreconcilable; rather they are reversed, negotiated, and transformed in the quest for state power in the everyday practices of these museum bureaucracies.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-27T13:46:34Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 ROSANGELA SIQUEIRA DA SILVA.pdf: 2099211 bytes, checksum: cd4c20161f0d4503fd23c1421e50bd26 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2015-08-03 / This thesis aims to analyze the secular nature of the Brazilian state, focusing on the provision of Religious Education in the public school system. Presents the successive changes that accompany this curriculum component. For this, there was a literature documentary and bibliographical research from contemporary documents: laws and normative opinions of Education. On bibliographical research were consulted scientific publications concerning the subject, drawn up between 1970 and 2013.The result of the document analysis on the relationship between secular state and the religious education in recent years indicate that the regional spheres public education systems seek to do away all forms of sectarianism and religious proselytism that prioritizes either religious matrix. With this, there is the introduction of a model of religious education with anthropological approach, which involves the different religious arrays of Brazilian culture. The document analysis of scientific publications support the need of religious education in the basic training of the students, since this presents the religious diversity of the socio-cultural-historical Brazilian context. In this educational approach has focused on the religious phenomenon not only a religious matrix of Brazilian culture. This research indicates changes as to the neutrality and religious impartiality in public spaces and the commitment to secularism in education. / A presente tese tem por objetivo analisar o papel da laicidade do Estado brasileiro, enfocando a oferta do Ensino Religioso nos sistemas públicos educacionais. Apresenta as sucessivas mudanças que acompanham esse componente curricular. Realizou-se uma pesquisa documental e bibliográfica a partir de documentos contemporâneos: leis e pareceres normativos da Educação Nacional. Na pesquisa bibliográfica foram consultadas publicações científicas relativas ao assunto, elaboradas entre 1996 e 2013. O resultado da análise documental sobre a relação entre Estado laico e o Ensino Religioso nos últimos anos indica que nas esferas regionais os sistemas públicos de ensino buscam afastar toda forma de confessionalismo e proselitismo religioso que prioriza uma ou outra matriz religiosa. Com isso, ocorre a introdução de um modelo de Ensino Religioso com enfoque antropológico, que envolve as diferentes matrizes religiosas da cultura brasileira. As análises documentais das publicações científicas permitiram confirmar a necessidade do Ensino Religioso na formação básica dos educandos, visto que esse componente tem como eixo norteador a diversidade cultural religiosa presente no contexto sócio-histórico-brasileiro. Nessa abordagem de ensino tem-se como foco o fenômeno religioso como tal, não apenas uma matriz religiosa da cultura brasileira. Essa pesquisa sinaliza mudanças quanto à imparcialidade religiosa nos espaços públicos e o compromisso com a laicidade na educação.

Why, in the second decade of the 21st century, do Chinese temple-goers visit Buddhist temples even if they are religiously unaffiliated, folk religionists, or even self-proclaimed secularists? How can we develop new conceptual tools to better understand religious involvement in contemporary China? The thesis investigates the significances of temple-based activities under late socialist state secularism, which defines religion in a specific way. It suggests that temple participation allows diverse Chinese citizens to flexibly negotiate modernity, sidestep institutional constraints, and introduce ritual-religious momentums to their temple-going lives in a mainstream society. Based on fifteen months of fieldwork, the study identifies and documents three stylistic forms of temple participation that are widely accessible and require no prior religious commitments: making wish-vows, drawing efficacious lots, and providing residential temple services. It refines a method of ritual analysis for studying how these non-institutional activities affect temple-goers’ self-understandings and their worldly stances. Theoretically, the dissertation discusses the social conditions for creative actions and the relationship between religious participation and state secularism. It shows that “temples” as spatial entities can be a place for many-sided meaningful activities and an incubator for complex visions of life, outside the conventional typecast of sacred spaces based on institutional religious differences. In late socialist China, Buddhist temples exist as semi-public sites because of an inclusive Mahayana Buddhist ideal of bodhisattva practices and, paradoxically, because of a state secularist policy that endorses “Religious Activities Venues” as spatial and even residential units. Overall, the dissertation treats Chinese temple-goers as our interlocutors sharing the global modernist predicament of state secularism. We theorize a sidestepping, non-confrontational mode of religious activism, move beyond a dichotomous view of religiosity and secularity, and consider the existing creative transformative processes of a hegemonic linear-developmental view of history. Temples as places of self-transformation are historically constituted sites within the sovereign state spaces. When Chinese temple-goers reconfigure their historical selves by actively visiting temple spaces, they also open the possibility of different futures for the late socialist regime. This brings us to an anthropology of religion effectively considering the making of humanity in contemporary China in a shared modern world.