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Pro-Poor and Pro-Market? Market Islam and New Politics of Islamic Generosity in Turkey
Abstract
Over the last two decades, Turkish Islamism has witnessed a transformation away from a “social-justice oriented” movement to a “market-oriented” one (Tugal 2009). Although many scholars have focused on what the emergence of ‘market Islam’ in Turkey entails for the organization of political economy, for state-society relations and for Islamism itself, the ways in which such a transformation impacts articulations of religious charity has been overlooked. In this paper, I engage with this critical transformation by focusing on how donors, volunteers and managers of religious charitable organizations have come to reinterpret the role of social generosity vis-à-vis poverty and inequality. Islamic teachings have traditionally glorified poverty, and held that the poor possess a higher spiritual place in the eyes of God. Due to their inferior position, the wealthy were expected to engage in practices of generosity in an egalitarian manner. However, recent transformations of Islamism have generated new interpretations that seek to reconcile Islamic teachings with capitalist ethics. What do these new perspectives say about the proper function religious generosity should play in a market society? How are new practices about generosity justified with reference to traditional beliefs in neoliberal Turkey? What does these new articulations of generosity entail for emergent notions of poverty, inequality and piety? I answer these questions by specifically focusing on three Islamic NGO’s. Each one of these NGOs is connected to another part of Islamic political society and each has become key players in the Turkish philanthropic third sector. Thus, an analysis of the intellectual discourses and on-the ground practices which shapes the charitable practices, ideas and ethics of these three organizations provides a key window onto the phenomenon of “market Islam.” The research is based on a 14-month fieldwork in Turkey that took place between August 2009 and June 2010, and which has since been followed up with shorter trips to Turkey. My initial findings suggest that although these intellectual discourses rearticulate notions of equality, poverty and benevolence in accordance with market-oriented norms, still, at times, social-justice oriented interpretations of Islamic generosity continue to undermine such pro-market articulations. Thus, Islamic beliefs about generosity operate both as a site for producing and resisting processes of marketization, individualization and privatization. What emerges then is a more complex picture of ‘market Islam’ in Turkey which includes both pro-poor and pro-market tendencies.
Discipline
Political Science
Geographic Area
None
Sub Area
Turkish Studies