10 research outputs found
'Whither Historical Sociology?': A Review Essay on the Current Scholarship
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51287/1/523.pd
From Gender to the Third-World: Extending Standpoint Theory to the Experience of the Oppressed
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51285/1/521.pd
Western Knowledge and Imperial Control: The First Ottoman Social Surveys, 1895-97
http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/51266/1/500.pd
Imagining the Turkish nation through 'othering' Armenians
National identities are socially constructed and inherently relational, such that collective imagination depends on a dialectical opposition to another identity. The ontology of otherness becomes the necessary basis of social imagination. National identity can hardly be imagined without a narrative of myths, and the Turkish nation is no exception. This article argues that the Turkish nation was imagined as a modern nation with territorial sovereignty after the erosion of traditional Ottoman umma (religious community) identity. During the process of this imagination, the Armenians became the first ‘others’, whose claims over eastern Anatolia were perceived as a real threat to Turkish territoriality and identity. Based on the analysis of modernist theories of nationalism, the methodological concern of this study is twofold: to explore the causal link between the policies of Ottoman modernisation and the emergence of Turkish nationalism; and to incorporate the self and other nexus into the relationship between the emergence of Turkish nationalism and the process of ‘othering’ the Armenians