Article detail · 2021
Taking the matter into your own hands: ethnographic insights into societal violence and the reconfigurations of the state in contemporary Turkey
- Year
- 2021
- Type
- article
Data source split
- YÖKSİS YÖKSİS article record
- YÖKSİS venue Southeast European and Black Sea Studies
- Catalog match (ISSN) Southeast European and Black Sea Studies
- OpenAlex OpenAlex enrichment (abstract, citations, topics)
Abstract
OpenAlex · English
This article explores the changing configurations of statehood in the Turkish context through an exploration of men’s engagements with conspiratorial narratives, vigilantism, and extralegal violence against whom they deem to be ‘subversive’ elements. Drawing on ethnographic research on nationalist communities in Trabzon, in northeast Turkey, I trace everyday encounters, imaginations, and utterances to understand how the circulation of conspiracy theories is intricately related to the production and prevalence of societal violence. Rather than dismissing them as untruthful accounts, I explore how the circulation of conspiratorial narratives issue forth pathways through which men act in the name of the state to confront threats against the integrity of the state/nation. The article demonstrates how certain state privileges (e.g., surveillance and legitimate violence) are delegated to civilian actors and how this delegation reconfigures the way the state operates in the Turkish context. Presenting an account of the changing parameters of statecraft, law, and political subjectivity in the Turkish context, findings of this research are of relevance since various other contexts across the globe also experience the adverse effects of the prevalence of conspiracy theories, vigilantism, and extralegal violence.
Topics
Citations
OpenAlex cited_by_count. Not a WoS or Scopus citation count; those sources have no separate column here.
20 citations
OpenAlex cited_by_count (cache / database)
10 publications in the local catalog that cite this work (OpenAlex reference match; not the full global list).
- Bureaucracies under authoritarian pressure: legal destabilisation, politicisation and bureaucratic subjectivities in contemporary Turkey 2022
- Conspiracy Theories as Productive Practices: Toward a Theory of Conspiratorial Style, Agency, and Politics 2024
- Negotiated Conformism: Gender Norms, Everyday Politics and Pro-government Actors in Turkey 2023
- Intimate and yet Alienated: Rethinking Homeland through Reworkings of Greek Heritage in Contemporary Trabzon, Turkey 2021
- Conspiratorial narratives as cultural repertoires and methodological tools 2024
- Identity and (dis)owning the past: anthropological insights into heritage preservation and revitalization 2025
- KOMPLO TEORİLERİ VE DIŞ POLİTİKA ALGISI: ULUSLARARASI İLİŞKİLER, GÜNDELİK SÖYLEMLER VE SİYASAL ALGILAR ÜZERİNE DİSİPLİNLERARASI BİR İNCELEME 2023
- Komplo Teorileri ve Dış Politika Algısı: Uluslararası İlişkiler, Gündelik Söylemler ve Siyasal Algılar Üzerine Disiplinlerarası Bir İnceleme 2023
- Ethnographies of the Psychosocial 2024
- Ethnographies of the Psychosocial 2023