Writing culture: Postmodernism and ethnography

In a radical critical gesture, postmodern ethnography emphasizes the concepts of writing, narrative and dialogue against a merely scientific recording of facts. Interestingly, it does not question an outsider's accessibility to cultural space. Instead, ethnographic knowledge is grounded on a philosophical claim on the limited nature of native knowledge itself and is rearticulated by an inclusive gesture which involves the native voice in an authentic expression of diversity. This is a redemptive gesture which fails to interrogate the limit of knowledge and reproduces the conventional ethnographic demand that the other should speak up. Following a deconstructive reading, the article suggests that the ethnographic text should instead open itself to the limit and should remark the radical loss it implies as an ethical opening of and questioning by the other, because this is the limit where the name of 'Man' is inscribed as the name of the native informant. Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications

Bilimsel bilgiye erişimin sorunları ve açık erişim hareketi

Kütüphane Haftası her yıl Mart ayının son haftasında çeşitli etkinliklerle kutlanmaktadır. 2014 yılında 50. Kütüphane Haftası nedeniyle İstanbul Şehir Üniversitesi Kütüphanesi tarafından bilimsel bilgiye erişim ve açık erişim konusu bu konuda çalışma yapan uzmanlar ve akademisyenlerin katılımı ile tartışıldı. Bu etkinliğin afiş, program, sunum ve videoları ekte yer almaktadır

Benevolence

Peer reviewe

A social and spatial restructuring in inner-city residential areas: the case of Istanbul

In Turkey over the last twenty years, the disruptive quality of such restructuring processes has been exacerbated by the government’s decision to embrace urban transformation as a tool to speed the country’s integration into the global economy. This article examines the process of “social and spatial restructuring” as called by the authors in inner-city housings of Istanbul, as part of a larger phenomenon. Its particular focuses are the methodologies of urban transformation and the social and spatial restructuring which reclaims the historical housing districts. The paper begins by developing a theoretical background to highlight the multidimensional structure of urban transformation and gentrification. Dealing with this framework, this paper examines different implementation processes between two different projects in the city of Istanbul. It compares two such approaches in Istanbul’s Fener-Balat and Suleymaniye neighborhoods, which are both located at the historic peninsula of the city

Fetal culture: Ultrasound imaging and the formation of the human

[No abstract available

Colliding urban transformation process: the case of historical peninsula, Istanbul

Over the last three decades, the disruptive quality of urban and social restructuring processes in Turkey has been intensified by the government’s decision to embrace the concept of urban transformation as a tool to boost the Turkish economy and development. In this respect, many cities have experienced a rapid urban transformation, practicing more of a top to down approach in implementing an urban planning and design, and at the same time undervaluing the potential of a participatory process for a common future and for the improvement of the quality of social and urban life. The article examines the process of “social and spatial restructuring” for the old-city housings of the city of Istanbul, as part of a larger urban transformation phenomenon. The research comparatively analyses three different urban transformation projects from the city of Istanbul's historically valued Golden Horn area and focuses on missions, actors and roles of the projects in terms of the social and spatial restructuring phases. As all three cases in this respect reclaims an upgrading of the quality of urban environment of the historic neighbourhoods; the mission is to expose the local multidimensional structure of these transformations via comparative discussion of their potentials, capabilities and limits in respect to the dynamics of urban transformation and community participation.Publisher versio

The Carriage Affair, or the Birth of a National Hero

The Carriage Affair, written in the late 19th century and regarded as a “canoni- cal” work of Turkish literature, is the parody of a mimic man produced by the Ottoman reform. The author Recaizade Mahmut Ekrem breaks with the familiar moralistic criticisms of the “Westernized snob”, which constituted a genre in the late 19th and early 20th century novel, and produces a surprisingly modern and lively literary text. Inventing interior monologue in a fascinating parody of the protagonist (who imitates the plot of the French popular romantic novel), while courageously dismissing the moral and logical alternative of a national subject of “true” mimesis, he also takes the risk of miming mimesis and falling into a void. According to standard literary judgment, the result is his failure to produce a pro- per narrative closure, to pass from mimesis to diegesis, i.e. to resolve the conflict which constructs the story. Reading the novel through its critical readings as well as a detailed discussion of the concepts of parody, mimesis and femininity, I argue that there is a paradoxical success in Ekrem’s failure. This unexpected literary work of its times virtually prefigures and preempt the later nation building in the 20th century. Most important of all, it demonstrates that any effort of representation and writing is always performed on a shifting ground.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

An Ethics of Images: ‘The Distant’

The rapid development of private media and especially television in Turkey in the last two decades has led to the emergence of a consumerist society of the spectacle. This essay offers a historical and cultural analysis of this new cultural hegemony and poses the question of the status of image in such a culture. In the first part, it offers an analysis and discussion of the status of the image in the new spectacular hegemony. In the second part, Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s award-winning film, The Distant, is interpreted as transforming the sense of image in everyday life and offering a new ethics and politics of image developed on the margins of contemporary cultural hegemony.Peer reviewe