Eleştiri ve Kültür Araştırmaları
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Browsing Eleştiri ve Kültür Araştırmaları by Author "Akar, Didar."
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Item Fans by proxy: cross-cultural media fandom in Turkey(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2015., 2015.) Yıldırım, Utku Ali; Akar, Didar.A “fan” can be anyone, from a regular viewer of a TV show, to a fan fiction writer, a collector, or an obsessive consumer. “Fandom”, therefore, is a community of these myriad of fans with their myriad of ways to interact with the text and each other. This study investigates the cross-cultural media fandom in Turkey and how -within a global context- Turkish media fans interact with the global media products in a different cultural, social and linguistic spheres. To investigate this community, this study relies on semi-structured interviews conducted with cross-cultural media fans in Turkey, who are urban middle-class young adults. The findings of the interviews are analyzed in five main topics: the fans share a specific kind of aesthetic attachment to the object of their fandom, they practice code-switching, they form a community by a sense of belonging and digital socialization processes, they show resistance toward the mass consumerism and Turkish popular culture, and they reject fandoms in their vernacular culture. All these practices render this group of people a community of practice, and these practices and dispositions are investigated within the light of the findings of the interviews.Item Fragile identities: prostitutes as signifiers of patriarchy and heteronormativity in Turkey(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in Social Sciences, 2015., 2015.) Sorma, Mediha Pınar.; Akar, Didar.'Prostitute', being a term or a stigma, both talks through the mouth of patriarchal system and deciphers it as an object, a tool and a subject created and reproduced by this very system over and over again. In a society where religion has penetrated into the social everyday life practices and where culture works as a shaping mechanism beyond law, female body can claim existence or agency only as much as the hegemonic patriarchal ideology consents. Prostitute body which has deliberately detached itself from or been cast out of the dominant ideology has to either embrace the 'victim' identity exposed to her or become one of the gears of the mechanism as a power holding subject. The extracts from the interviews studied in this work reveal that prostitutes reproduce the victimization discourse as a way of realizing their social existence and by doing that they describe the 'essential' elements of womanhood definition such as marriage and motherhood as a lack, nostalgia or a utopia. Those women see men in their lives either as sacred and untouchable figures or as symbols of power to succumb to. Therefore, they serve as the sustainable and suppressible source created by the patriarchal and heteronorrnative ideology to satisfy male desire. When the interview extracts of the prostitutes who reject the victimization discourse, knowingly or not, are analyzed, it is seen that the only way to get empowered for them is to appropriate masculine power and become an oppressor or a masculanized woman. Thus, it still remains a utopia to talk about prostitutes as empowered women and a counter-power against patriarchy and heteronorrnativity.Item Media representation of migration to Turkey :|a diachronic perspective(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2020., 2020.) Kavaklı, Sezgi Başak.; Akar, Didar.This thesis investigates the effects of empathic motives of the political power holders on the treatment and media representation of large groups of displaced people that arrived in Turkey between 1950 and 2017. It provides a diachronic analysis of the terms through which the print media and Turkish migration policies identified different groups of displaced people along with the themes of discussions that surfaced in the collocates of these terms. The findings suggest that the media identification of the displaced people depends on the societal predisposition towards them and political motives of the government at the time rather than the definitions in the law The narratives on Bulgarian Turks and Turkmens adapts a positively inclusionary tone, in line with Turkey’s economic and social motives of improving farming practices and orchestrating an ethnically and culturally homogenous population. The terms used in media and by political representatives correlate in this period. On the other hand, the representation of the Iraqi Kurds and the Romani in the media are highly avoidant and exclusionary; and similar terms are adapted once again by the government and the media.The representation of Syrians is a mixture of these tones and parallels the polarized opinions in the political context. Thus, strong parallels between the economic, political, and social motives of political power holders and the representation of displaced people in the media are observed.Item The cosmopolitanization of culinary "Consumption" : |Steakhouses as instances of the culture industry(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2019., 2019.) Akgül, Erdem.; Akar, Didar.This thesis is one of the firsts in Turkish context and literature in analyzing how culture industry and transforms culinary consumption into a cosmopolitan practice through steakhouses. Using the methods of thematic analysis and discourse analysis, the data collected from 40 interviewees including both the people who have been to steakhouses and who have been not has been theoretically and practically analyzed. As a result, it has been observed that steakhouses have an expert, western-connoting, and socioeconomically high perception in the eyes of the consumers; and this perception promoted by culture industry has been observed to be reproduced in popular discourse. Furthermore, steakhouses have been concluded to be effectively functioning ideological instruments of culture industry operating in the co-existence of cosmopolitanism, globalization, and capitalism by selling perceptions full of associations symbolizing better life standards and high-level capitals. It has also been found that in addition to the primary and secondary functions of eating as existing theories suggest, dining-out at steakhouse can also be regarded as a tertiary activity in which people try for meaning-making via symbolic performance activities through which they continue to spend money, construct ideal identities, and buy cultural products such as high-SES experience.Item The mad’ spotted? politics of mad identity through discursive themes on Mahallenin Delisi (The Mad of the Neighborhood)(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2013., 2013.) Arıcan, Aysu.; Akar, Didar.This study primarily deals with the politics of mad identity, and specifically, it aims to explore the discursive construction of mahallenin delisi (the mad of the neighborhood), a disappearing public figure, as a social identity in the accounts of non-professional people. In this direction, the construction of the prominent characteristics of the mad of the neighborhood, and the mode of social relations with this figure in terms of particular emotions, social values, social roles and functions that are attached with this identity are examined. In addition, the relation of the mad of the neighborhood identity to the mental patient identity, and the particular aspects psychiatric discourse operates in the constructions of mad identity are explored through discursive themes on mahallenin delisi. Five semi-structured focus group interviews including thirty-three middleaged adults were conducted in İstanbul, Antalya and Afyonkarahisar to collect personal experiences and views on the mad of the neighborhood. The participants were mostly the natives of the city the session was held, and their age ranged from thirty-five to sixty-five. Focus group sessions were audio and video recorded, and the mean duration of the sessions was ninetyeight minutes. The study demonstrates that the mad of the neighborhood is constructed as a public identity whereas the mental patient is constructed as a medical and institutional identity, albeit both terms refer to the mad. The differences in the respective constructions of the two identities further influence the mode of social relations with the mad and the perspectives on the confinement of the mad. Whereas the mad of the neighborhood was embraced among the neighborhood community through infantilization and could lead a life in public space, the social exclusion and the confinement of the mental patient is legitimized through their criminalization. Moreover, the ongoing spatial and social transformations of public space in terms of the neoliberalization of the cities are argued to produce new modes of social control, regulation, and exclusion in the neighborhoods through the dramatization of crime and violence. The public spaces are redeveloped and transformed in ways to limit social encounters with the mad and other marginalized groups, which further reinforces the social exclusion of the mad. In sum, modern psychiatry and neoliberal urbanism both contribute to the disappearance of the mad of the neighborhood as a public identity through their legitimization of social exclusion of the mad in their own particular discourses on public safety and through their respective mechanisms of social control and regulation.Item The role of narrative in creating the ideal woman: The case of Hayat Magazine(Thesis (M.A.) - Bogazici University. Institute for Graduate Studies in the Social Sciences, 2017., 2017.) Özbarlas, Zeynep.; Akar, Didar.This study investigates the creation of ‘proper’ womanhood through the content analysis of celebrity women’s profiles in Hayat magazine, published between the years 1956 and 1960. The contextual framework of the study is the emergence of the modern nuclear family and women’s place in it as a new form of governmentality in the Turkish Republic as part of the modernization process. This study pays special attention to how ‘proper’ womanhood, one of the central ideological constructions of the new regime, was defined as being modern and at the same time as being first and foremost decent mothers and wives, the main regulators of the modern nuclear family. The main sources used are celebrity women’s profiles in Hayat in a period when the construction of the new regime matured to a great extent. The profiles are analyzed as important cultural products both reflecting and reproducing the discursive formation of ‘proper’ womanhood. Elaborating on Warner’s (2002) theory on the mass public subject, this study argues that strikingly different approaches of Hayat magazine regarding foreign female celebrities and local ones orient the readers to a direct identification with the local female celebrities while the foreign women’s celebrity profiles channel the readers to the normativity of marriage.