Abstract
The Turkish state has often been considered in the literature as a strong and unified entity, and as a sovereign body largely impermeable to social demands. This talk will present a collective project aimed at reconsidering this idea of the Turkish state, and at studying in depth its links to society (Aymes, Gourisse, Massicard (eds.), Order and Compromise, Brill, 2015). It will also discuss individual research carried out in this framework and devoted to muhtars – the lowest level elected officials in Turkey, recently published as Street-Level Governing. Negotiating the State in Urban Turkey. This book provides an ethnographic study of the everyday state, starting from the premise that the “margin” of state administration is not peripheral at all, but instructive as to how it functions. At the intersection of everyday life and the exercise of power, muhtars offer a personalized point of contact between citizens and state institutions, which produces contracting effects in terms of government. Drawing on this research, the talk will address more general methodological challenges – especially about working on the blurred boundaries between state and non-state -, and discuss the choice and use of conceptual frameworks.
06 Apr 2023