Time: 27 April 2023  (Thursday)  3：00-4：30pm  (Beijing Time)

Venue: Zoom（online）

Meeting ID: 83994296588  Password: 651006

Language:  English

Topic: Elitist by Default? Interaction Dynamics and the Inclusiveness of Secularization in Turkish Literary Milieus

Abstract: Nonwestern secularization has the reputation of an elitist project, but poetry milieus in 20th-century Turkey experienced secularization in a relatively inclusive manner. Using comparative-historical, network, and statistical methods, this article compares poetry milieus to novelistic milieus, whose secularization closely resembles the Turkish/Islamic stereotype. This exercise identifies a previously unnoticed role that interaction dynamics play in shaping secularization patterns. As such, western-nonwestern difference as regards secularization is neither fiction nor fate: it involves structures of interaction that may appear anywhere. These findings suggest a more Simmelian direction for future scholarship, broadly affirming the ascendant culturalist orientation in the sociology of religion while revising some of its particular claims. They also call for a civic republican turn: while tempering past scholarship’s vilification of the state, they suggest that a vibrant civil society is the more vital component of relatively inclusive secularization.

Lecturer：Barış Büyükokutan is Associate Professor of Sociology at Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey. His research focuses on sociology of culture, sociology of religion, and comparative-historical sociology. His work has appeared in American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, and Political Power & Social Theory.

Moderator: Kurtuluş Gemici is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. He is a comparative-historical sociologist working on international finance, the sociology of markets, and theory. His work has appeared in journals such as Theory & Society, Socio-Economic Review, Sociological Theory, and Politics & Society. Recent publications include Capital Mobility and Distributional Conflict (Routledge, 2020) and How Global Are Investment Banks? (Regional Studies, 2020, with Karen Lai).