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NEOLIBERALISM AND ACADEME IN TURKEY – A FEMINIST READING
Abstract
This paper offers a feminist reading of the neoliberal knowledge production regimes in Turkey’s universities. In doing so, I problematize the connection between neoliberal order of things and religio-authoritarian style of policy making in the (re-)production, circulation and exchange of knowledge. I start from the argument that Turkey’s academic life has been restructured in line with the ongoing regime change in the country. I try to delineate the historical pattern that grounded the dialectics of this restructuration. The paper is composed of three main parts. In the first part, I draw an outline of the neoliberal effect on the academe at a global scale. This part also contains a brief historical backdrop to the current state of affairs in Turkey’s university settings. In the second part, I discuss the most recent reshuffle in the universities in the country (2016- ) that accompanied the most massive academic purge in its history. In the third part, I look at the pros and consof initiatives for knowledge-production that host counter and/or alternative opportunity spaces against the neoliberal order of things. The analysis that runs through the paper is based on an inter-textual reading of Turkey’s post-1980 experience with neoliberalism with a view to the universities. Thus, I rely on historico-institutional reading of the background to the current university system in Turkey. I also bring in (auto-)ethnographic reading of the most recent displacements in academic life of the country – interviews and conversations with participants to counter and/or alternative knowledge production venues and field notes from within the venues.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
Turkey
Sub Area
Gender/Women's Studies