Veiling,secularism, and the neoliberal subject: national narratives and supranational desires in Turkey and France

Abstract In this article we examine recent heated debates about the acceptability of the veil in public institutions in Turkey and France. France's adoption of a law that banned all conspicuous religious and political symbols from public schools was a focal point in these debates. A restraining attitude towards veiling is even more extensive in Turkey. In this article we focus on the historical and contemporary connections between these two secular republics, as well as the ideological context of global neoliberalism and the policies of suprastate and transnational organizations to analyse how the discourses and practices of secularism have been employed with respect to the question of wearing veils in public institutions. We argue that the concept of secularism, of which the veil debate is one component, has been important for state formation and economic development in both Turkey and France, and that in the contemporary period it is also employed with respect to the image of a particular kind of unattached and unbiased neoliberal subject. France and Turkey provide revealing cases of the ways in which contemporary secularism as a technology of governance reflects both historical patterns and new trends in the neoliberal era.     

Uneven and combined development and sub-imperialism: the internationalization of Brazilian capital

This paper examines the political-economic outgrowth of Brazilian capitalism in the global south after the outset of the global financial crisis. In analysing the public-sector finance policy of the Workers’ Party (PT) during the crisis, I argue that a structuration of investment was established. Utilizing theoretical premises of uneven and combined development and sub-imperialism, this paper traces the motions of the industrial financing processes that perpetuate Brazilian capitalism outside of the boundaries of the nation-state to shed light on the relationship between ‘emergent’ economies, their state structures, and the developing world. I argue that such structures represent a policy to accelerate capital accumulation abroad.     

Economic Transition,Class Formation,and the Superintendent State in the Midwest: 1850‐1900

This article outlines and clarifies the complex relationship between economic development, the formation of classes, political movement responses to these changes, and state institutional capacity building in response to these movements in the Midwestern US. It seeks to remedy views of the transition to capitalism in America that focus too narrowly on a moment of transition, positing instead a long, politically contested process of class formation by elucidating the specific interactions between agrarian and union movements and state‐building processes. Our research reveals the substantial role of the state in forcing through acceptance of economic changes and shifting class locations through a co‐developmental process of political resistance movements and state‐building.     

Intimate circuits: modernity,migration and marriage among post‐Soviet women in Turkey

The study of migration too often ignores the ways that labour migrants' emotional entanglements and complicated personal relationships factor into their experiences of being people on the move. In examining post‐Soviet migrant women's relationships with Turkish men and the ways these are regulated in Turkey, in this article I consider how intimate practices of marriage and performances of ‘love’ have emerged as key aspects of transnational mobility. These intimate practices both enable long‐term transnational circuits between post‐Soviet homelands and Turkey, and attest to the way global capitalism is redefining personal lives.     

Class,State, and Revolution in the History of American Capitalism

The significance of the American Revolution has generally been downplayed in accounts of the rise of capitalism in the United States, especially those undertaken from a critical perspective. New approaches to the history of capitalism, however, have emphasised the centrality of the state. This article argues that re‐centring the state's role in the history of capitalism should return attention to the significant restructuring of the American state that occurred during and as a result of the revolution. At the same time, it argues that this restructuring cannot be understood historically outside the context of class‐formation of which it was a part. Revolution reshaped the new nation's capitalist class, in the near term, much more than it did the labouring classes. This reconfiguration encompassed and went beyond the innovation of new political institutions. In the long‐run it helped to underpin the particular development of capitalism in the United States.     

Model Hong Kong malls and their development in mainland China: consumer iconicity and the trans/national capitalist class

Relational geographies of capital and consumption between Hong Kong and mainland China have been forming through tourism engagement in Hong Kong and the development of model Hong Kong malls in China. This analysis of urban restructuring for the consumer economy identifies how landmark Hong Kong malls are reproduced in major cities of China by networks of Hong Kong property firms and mainland elites. Adapting Leslie Sklair's formulation of architectural iconicity in the culture‐ideology of consumerism, this economic relationship, which restructures urban space, constructs iconic built forms and develops Chinese consumerism, marks hegemonic opportunities of a national capitalist class, suggesting how Chinese state capitalism and its Hong Kong networks limit and incrementally engage transnational capital while instantiating Hong Kong‐style consumer iconicity. New malls in mixed‐use developments in China often occupy sites of historical markets and thus affirm Sklair's prediction that iconic architecture increasingly proclaims consumer space while claiming historic forms of public space.     

The emancipated city: notes on Gezi Revolts

The article deals with 2013 revolts in Turkey as an attempt at inventing a link between the particular and the universal. To start with, I briefly discuss the history of Turkish republicanism and the transformation of its relation to secularism, economy and the state. Then I turn to the political dimension of the revolts, focusing on the iconic figures of subjectivity that emerged during the events. In this respect, the practical and theoretical tension between mobility and immobility is emphasized, arguing that it is what constitutes the destabilizing aspect of the revolts in relation to both Islamic neo-liberalism and neo-liberal Islam. This is followed by a discussion of the reactionary views on the revolts combined with a critique of their political-theological leitmotivs. The pivot around which these moves are undertaken and the terms of the discussion are determined is the concept of event.     

The Development of the State-Owned Enterprises in Turkey: 1923–1980

This article seeks to re-interpret the development of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Turkey from 1923 to 1980. The article shows that the dominant strong state tradition (SST) literature, which interpreted the development of SOEs as an independent project of the state to maintain its control over society, had been unable to fully explain the development processes of SOEs because it treated the state as an external entity distinct from (and even opposing to) the social classes. Employing an alternative Poulantzian framework, the article argues that the development of SOEs in Turkey was driven by class-industry interest and appeared as a precondition of the development of capitalism in Turkey. As such, relations between SOEs and the social classes were internal and complementary, rather than external and antagonistic. The SOEs were providing the bulk of industrial inputs and investment capital to the bourgeoisie fractions within the constitutive context of domestic capital accumulation strategies at the time (e.g. capitalist consolidation in 1930s, capitalist expansion in 1950s, capitalist expansion with duty losses in 1960s and 1970s). The SOEs were also benefiting the laboring and popular classes in terms of employment opportunities and higher wages.     

Canadian Fossil Capitalism,Corporate Strategy,and Post‐Carbon Futures

This study investigates the relationship between the carbon extractive sector in Canada and renewable energy development. Specifically, it examines the strategies employed by Canadian carbon‐capital firms to shape and control alternative energy and considers if we are witnessing signs of “transition capture” as some oil, gas, and coal firms invest in a gradual shift toward “climate capitalism.” I investigate first, investments by large Canada‐based fossil fuel companies in renewable energy and second, interlocking directorate relations between the fossil fuel sector and the renewables industry. Findings suggest the possibility of a long‐term strategic orientation toward a climate capitalist model of development by some carbon‐capital firms; however, this alignment remains highly tentative, with evidence pointing to an industry that is largely without plans for energy transition.     

The Making of Entrepreneurial Islam and the Islamic Spirit of Capitalism 1

This essay examines the relationship between Islam and economy through a case study of Islamic entrepreneurs in Turkey. It analyzes the cultural politics of Islamic entrepreneurs and examines the Islamization of capitalism and the construction of entrepreneurial Islam by probing the interpretative activities of Islamic actors who deconstruct and reconstruct the relationship between Islam, economy and entrepreneurship. The construction of Islam as incompatible with and antagonistic to capitalism has a long history. Vestiges of such thinking still continue to be reflected in contemporary accounts that depict the encounter between Islamic societies and forces of global capital as a hostile battle, each trying to outdo the other. It can be argued that this confrontational scenario is not limited to Islamic world, but also displayed in other accounts that study the meeting of forces of capital with those of local cultures at a global scale. This essay attempts to challenge such dualist accounts that oppose “global capital” and “local culture”, and shows how such dualisms fail to see how capitalism and culture interpenetrate and transform each other. The essay attempts to show that a new synthesis between religion and capitalism is unfolding where culture has not been outdone but is creatively transformed and integrated to capitalism, while capitalism is made a part of “one’s culture”.     

A Faithful Alliance Between the Civil Society and the State: Actors and Mechanisms of Accommodating Syrian Refugees in Istanbul

Reception, hospitality and integration are certainly the main challenges of the contemporary world, particularly for countries like Turkey which hosts more than 3 million refugees from Syria. The aim of this article is to analyze the reception practices of civil society organizations and the nature of these bodies’ relationship with state agencies by focusing on Sultanbeyli, a peripheral district of Istanbul. Based on a fieldwork conducted in this district, we present the functioning of various state and non‐state actors in order to uncover not only the role of NGOs, but also the nature of the relations between them and the state in terms of governance of refugee reception in Turkey. We thus argue that the reception of Syrian refugees is undertaken by a “faithful” alliance between the state and certain NGOs, a partnership where civil society assumes a supporting role to the state in refugee reception.     

Variegated neoliberalization: geographies,modalities, pathways

Across the broad field of heterodox political economy, ‘neoliberalism’ appears to have become a rascal concept – promiscuously pervasive, yet inconsistently defined, empirically imprecise and frequently contested. Controversies regarding its precise meaning are more than merely semantic. They generally flow from underlying disagreements regarding the sources, expressions and implications of contemporary regulatory transformations. In this article, we consider the handling of ‘neoliberalism’ within three influential strands of heterodox political economy – the varieties of capitalism approach; historical materialist international political economy; and governmentality approaches. While each of these research traditions sheds light on contemporary processes of market‐oriented regulatory restructuring, we argue that each also underplays and/or misreads the systemically uneven, or ‘variegated’, character of these processes. Enabled by a critical interrogation of how each approach interprets the geographies, modalities and pathways of neoliberalization processes, we argue that the problematic of variegation must be central to any adequate account of marketized forms of regulatory restructuring and their alternatives under post‐1970s capitalism. Our approach emphasizes the cumulative impacts of successive ‘waves’ of neoliberalization upon uneven institutional landscapes, in particular: (a) their establishment of interconnected, mutually recursive policy relays within an increasingly transnational field of market‐oriented regulatory transfer; and (b) their infiltration and reworking of the geoinstitutional frameworks, or ‘rule regimes’, within which regulatory experimentation unfolds. This mode of analysis has significant implications for interpreting the current global economic crisis.     

Introduction

CAPITALISM HAS ALWAYS BEEN about the destruction of community. The removal of communities of aboriginals and peasants from their land and craftsmen from their tools and their skills were crucial conditions for the development of early industrial capitalism. The triumph of capitalism required a cultural revolution, for, as E.P. Thompson has written, "there is no such thing as economic growth which is not at the same time, growth and change of a culture."¹ New ideologies of possessive individualism, secularism and scientism were part of this far-reaching cultural revolution, which accompanied and legitimated an economy that for the first time in history was conceived and justified as operating according to its own rational laws, independent of community.     

Secular state,religious lives: Islam and the state in Malaysia

Debates on secularism in Malaysia often revolve around the legal, especially the constitutional, framework. To this end several NGOs organised a road show in 2006 to debate issues surrounding freedom of religion. Not only were these events mobbed by angry crowds, but also the state intervened and shut down these and future discussions on the topic of religion, deeming such debates sensitive. This article addresses the particularities of secularism in Malaysia vis-à-vis Olivier Roy's thesis in ‘Secularism Confronts Islam’ that sees religious space and secular space as discernable yet not antithetical and Charles Taylor's thesis in the ‘Secular Age’, where he points to a new definition of secularism as a pluralist and transcendent notion of belief. In Malaysia both variants are present, with the state playing a dangerous game situating itself between reactionary Muslim forces and a moderate majority.     

阿拉伯世界的世俗主义与世俗化

阿拉伯世界的世俗主义是受西方的影响而产生的。19世纪中叶到20世纪中叶是阿拉伯世界世俗主义发展的第一阶段,首先在阿拉伯基督教信徒中间产生,并为阿拉伯基督教信徒和穆斯林共同发展。凯末尔领导的土耳其世俗化运动,使作为非阿拉伯国家的土耳其以其世俗主义模式影响了阿拉伯世界,很多阿拉伯国家随之走上世俗化道路。但从20世纪70年代开始,现代伊斯兰主义兴起,作为非阿拉伯国家的伊朗以其伊斯兰革命影响了阿拉伯世界现代伊斯兰主义的发展。作为对现代伊斯兰主义的回应,阿拉伯世界的世俗主义进入了第二阶段,福阿德·宰凯里亚的思想最具代表性。     

Economic infrastructure and the development of state autonomy: A case study of U.S. maritime policy

This paper interprets the development of the U.S. maritime industry as reflecting changes in the economic substructure of American capitalism. The analysis seeks to explain how the changing interests of the state, as well as the changing balance of power between capitalists, workers and the state stimulated changes in the maritime industry. Three time periods are used: the Revolution until 1867; 1868 to 1897; and 1898‐on. These three periods represent distinct periods of policy change and strategies of capital accumulation for the state and for capitalists. A combination of Marxian and Weberian theories of political economy are used to explain these capital‐state relations.     

The State of the Network: Radical Anxiety,Real Paranoia and Quantum Culture

In this article, the author proposes to explore the state of the contemporary network society through an analysis of the human effects of the conditions of globalisation, fast capitalism, postmodern warfare and quantum culture. In the first section of the article, the author considers the problem of social relations in the global network society and, in particular, examines the effect of radical anxiety on self—other communication. Following this section, which turns off a consideration of the violence of fast capitalism, the author focuses on the relationship between the science of immunology, paranoia and postmodern warfare. Here, in the second section of the article, the author shows how the radical anxiety that plagues those who inhabit the lightning‐fast network resolves itself in paranoid reaction formations that make productive self—other relations more or less impossible. Finally, the author explores potential solutions to the problem of self—other violence in the network and concludes with a discussion of the stumbling‐block to the invention of a more humane social and political form of globalisation, neo‐liberal/neoconservative quantum culture.     

The Imperial and Transpacific Origins of Chinese Capitalism

This article restores early colonial Hong Kong to a key role in the history of capitalism and the integration of the Pacific. It argues that in the 1840s Hong Kong became the first identifiably capitalist Chinese society and a nexus between the China coast and both the expanding British and US imperial systems. It first demonstrates how Hong Kong's colonial regime swiftly re‐structured the island's social‐property relations and scaffolded its residents toward the ceaseless accumulation of capital. It then examines how this nascent node of Chinese capitalism integrated with the westward expansion of American capitalism amid the California Gold Rush and concludes by analyzing how Hong Kong's transpacific networks facilitated the expansion of capitalist systems into late nineteenth‐century China, most especially Shanghai.     

The Two Hundred and Fifty Year Transition: How the American Empire Became Capitalist

This paper aims to rethink United States history from the colonial era through the Civil War and Reconstruction by examining how capitalism and empire joined together as the logic of expansion increasingly became driven by the logic of capital over approximately two hundred and fifty years. Specifically, it argues that (what became) the United States originated as a ‘society with capitalism’ and became a ‘capitalist society’. This transition was a highly complex and uneven process as a variety of social forms developed and interacted, and in which there was not one road to capitalism, but a variety, depending on the historical circumstance. To accomplish this, first, the article reviews the Marx‐Weber debate to develop a theoretical and methodological approach to the historical sociology of capitalism. The remainder of the paper focuses on narrating an empirical interpretation of the transition to capitalism including the diversity of labor forms capital historically utilized.     

Lost in Transitions? Feudalism,Colonialism, and Egypt's Blocked Road to Capitalism (1800–1920)

We revisit the transition debate to capitalism through the historical case of nineteenth century Egypt and the theoretical lens of uneven and combined development. We argue that the twin concepts of formal and real subsumption of labor under capital offer a necessary methodological device to study capitalist transitions. We conclude that nineteenth century Egypt was not a society experiencing an ‘indigenous’ transition to capitalism that was blocked by colonial intervention. Instead, colonialism warped the ongoing formation of a commercial-absolutist state, which led to a combination of feudal and capitalist social forms that lingered well into the middle of the twentieth century. Through a long-term historical analysis of the Egyptian social formation as a complex ensemble of political power relations and ongoing cycles of articulations of multiple mode of productions we problematize the dominant ‘modernization’ thesis. The modernization paradigm presupposes that economic growth will take place due to globalized markets, transforming, in turn, existing social and political practices and institutions along modern lines. This idea has been reiterated by neoclassical and neo-institutionalist economists who understand economic backwardness as a simple lack of market-efficient behavior of local economic agents. As such, we also emphasize that the gradual integration of the Egyptian social formation into the capitalist world market did not automatically lead to the establishment of a dominant capitalist mode of production within this formation.