Neoliberalization and authoritarianism are often presumed to filter through micro-processes of regulation, discipline and subjectification. However, such dynamics rarely, if ever, occur smoothly or predictably. They inevitably wrestle with varying forms of friction, compromise and struggle. Building upon the theoretical insights of Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau, this paper analyzes the everyday ‘tactics’ through which bakers and ordinary citizens manipulate and evade governmental interventions that attempt to organize, manage and regulate the spaces in which they live. I draw on eighteen month of ethnographic fieldwork in Amman’s bakeries to illuminate the ingenious forms of “quiet encroachment” (Bayat 2013) through which urban subaltern groups exert agency over their own lives and influence public policy. The article’s empirical focus is driven by the work of James Scott, Asef Bayat and Lisa Wedeen, whose close attention to under-examined forms of contention, situated in the continuum between total quiescence and open rebellion, has helped elucidate dynamics of power and resistance typically overlooked in statist-institutional perspectives. Focusing on routine practices in three bakeries, located in very different neighborhoods of the Jordanian capital, the empirical sections will emphasize the spatial dimensions of livelihood tactics and the cultural politics of place. They will underscore the simultaneity of symbolic and material struggles over the bakery, a locus of alternative imaginaries and practices that try to contest but also conform, and sometimes reshape, the predominant economic logics driving Jordanian neoliberalization. By assessing place in this fashion, as a politically charged lived space, rather than as a hermetically sealed biophysical reality, the article seeks to assess the effects of governmental interventions, as well as the constellation of acts through which citizens grapple with authoritarian power and capitalist transformation. Unsurprisingly, a very different picture emerges when the ever-changing landscapes of governance are examined through the practices and perspectives of those governed and placed within them.

The aim of this research is to draw a preliminary map of how Turkish shopkeepers develop their perceptions toward irregular new migrants (“new” as of post 1980s) and explore the nature and the extent to which the intensity of economic relationships with migrants shape those perceptions. As is widely accepted, the incorporation of migrants to the economy and to the social fabric of the host country is a crucial issue. It is impossible to assess this incorporation process without taking into consideration the perceptions and the attitudes of the citizens regarding migrants. With the influx of 2.76 million Syrian “refugees” (who are officially not recognized as such, but is put under ambiguous “temporary protection” status in Turkey), this process has become even more complicated and more urgent. Understanding perceptions of citizens towards migrants can also help us make sense of the incorporation process and assess the effectiveness of the legal/economic and political management of irregular migration in Turkey. The findings of this paper are based on a neighborhood-based fieldwork, which captures the perceptions of shopkeepers with various economic relationships with immigrants, in four districts of Istanbul, Osmanbey, Laleli, Kumkap? and Aksaray in which large numbers of irregular immigrants can be encountered. The research involved in-depth face-to-face one focus group in each district, and a small pilot survey. The fundamental characteristic of these four districts is that, they all host a considerable number of diversified migrant groups, who either reside in the neighborhood, engage in "shuttle trade,” send goods and food supplies to their home countries and/or work in different sectors so as to survive. In short, the migrant groups make part of the economic life, albeit a predominantly informal one. What are the factors that shape the perceptions of shopkeepers concerning migrants? How do the shopkeepers with an economic relationship with immigrants differ from those with no relationship, if any? Do positive economic relationships/profits have an impact on the perceptions toward migrants? How does his own economic condition (and yes the shopkeepers are predominantly male), his economic threat perception (precarity, vulnerability to shocks) as well as his perception of the state and state's undertakings so as to manage irregular migration shape those sentiments? Are there differences among various migrant groups in terms of perceptions? Do political and ideological perceptions, ethnicity and religion matter? This study seeks answers to such questions mapping possible determinants of perceptions about migrants in Istanbul.

In 2012, a village of 3000 residents in Egypt’s Delta declared its secession from the governorate. None of its residents had joined the Revolution in 2011, and none of my respondents from the village considered their act of secession to be political. This paper builds on a 3-year ethnography in a small Egyptian village, Al-Tahseen, in an attempt to explicate the relationship of the rural to the Egyptian Revolution. Most accounts of the Egyptian Revolution have marginalized the village, describing the uprisings as a rupture enabled by city dwellers par excellence (Sassen 2011); an assertion hard to resist considering the iconic space that Tahrir Square occupied worldwide. Other accounts brought the village into the story of the revolution by focusing on the participation of the rural youth in the revolution by traveling to the cities (Abu-Lughod 2012). These accounts not only spatially reconfigure the Revolution as urban, but also temporally fix it as a rupture, thus ideologically injecting it with the presumption of revolutionary actors, and disregarding the multiple threads of actors, geographies and timelines that have come together to enable an epitome in January 25th. Placing Al-Tahseen’s revolutionary action on the timeline of the Revolution challenges accounts of the urban, sudden, youth/ activist revolution. Through this account, I attempt to examine how the mobilization in the village relates to the mobilization in the urban squares, and to the narrative of the revolution, including through the media, legislatures and the political conflict. The villagers were not part of the Event of Revolution, but have watched it closely on TV, and modelled their choice of action and timeline accordingly. The village had its own revolution, but its timeline was consciously differentiated from the timeline of the Event of Revolution. A parallel narrative of the rural revolution emerges, one that is particular and local, but still inevitably in negotiation with the national discourse and event. In doing so, I explore the multiple meanings of “the political”, investigate the plural actors of the revolution, and make a humble attempt to underscore the complicated ways the rural connected to what has been observed as an urban revolution. Instead of bringing the village to the center of the Revolution, I insist that Al-Tahseen is a particular revolution, forming one contingent reality for a Revolution that is hard to pinpoint as singular or exclusive.

Since becoming President of Turkey, Erdogan has -to general surprise— called to his palace to listen to speeches about general policy a hitherto largely neglected and frequently scorned figure, namely muhtars--low-level officials at the neighborhood or village level. Indeed, this apparent ‘margin’ of state is not peripheral, because this is often through them that citizens experience the state. Therefore, they allow a privileged analytical lens upon the everyday enactment of the state. As elected minor officials, muhtars are at the crossroads between top-down and bottom-up dynamics. They can best be described as intermediaries between state and residents, whose mediating function works both ways round. Do they act as state agents, or on the contrary as relays for the interests of inhabitants? Since they are subject to state injunctions whilst at the same time dependent upon their constituents, they are caught up in complex and sometimes contradictory loyalties. This paper examines the ambivalent political effects of this way of governing from below. It is based on an in-depth empirical study of the way in which the muhtars actually carry out their role and their interactions with neighborhood dwellers. Qualitative fieldwork including semi-structured interviews and observations was conducted in five differentiated Istanbul neighborhoods between 2012 and 2014. On the one hand, muhtars appear as amicable agents of the state who make the administrative practices more legible to the citizens by employing circuits of familiarity. In many ways, they facilitate the citizens’ relationship to the state and contribute to administrative socialization. This is especially the case for groups most distant to the administrative order - the ones who mostly resort to muhtars - while well-off or educated people tend to address bureaucratic institutions. However, the personalized relationships one can build with the muhtars also opens the way to bypassing the institutional order. Favors are not an exception but a common pattern of behavior of muhtars - and a common expectation of the residents. The widespread opinion that access to muhtars is not equal for all but may diverge according to political or ethnic cleavages helps de-neutralize the state order and fuels feelings of exclusion. The study of everyday politics has mostly been located among the disenfranchised, as an anti-hegemonic practice per se. This paper analyzes everyday politics not as separated from, or opposed to legal politics, but in relationship with it, and shows that it may also have hegemonic effects.

With the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, Turkey witnessed radical modernizing reforms under the Republican People’s Party’s authoritarian single-party regime led by Ataturk. The single party system continued until 1945. Just after World War II, the second president Ismet Inonu opened the doors to democracy by giving the green light to establishment of new parties and associations. Turkey was transformed to democracy without any serious political tension, bloody revolution or insurrection. Turkey’s such soft landing on democracy from the most authoritarian regime in the Middle East has been one of the most debated subjects of the Turkish history. Scholars have produced different explanations for this astonishing transition. The most widespread explanation is the president Inonu’s and the RPP’s strong desire to establish a liberal-democratic regime. Another explanation emphasizes the social impact of World War II that resulted in widespread social discontent. According to another explanation, the state economic policies, particularly the Wealth Tax and the land reform attempts alienated the landed-interests and mercantile elite from the government and disrupted the coalition between the Kemalist bureaucracy and the bourgeoisie within the RPP. Perhaps the most popular argument underlines the post-war international system, which forced Inonu to make an insightful diplomatic maneuver to get support of the Western powers against the Soviet Russia. However, scholars have barely touched on the role of society in this process. When they have attempted to explore the social dynamics, they have not gone beyond the society’s general dissatisfaction with the high cost of living and the state economic policies. Especially the effects of the lower-classes such as working class and poor peasants in this process have been ignored so far. Especially the narrow conception of resistance as formal-organized action led scholars to overlook the interactions between the state and society that occurred in everyday life and the people’s daily survival struggles, resistances and loss-minimizing self-defensive strategies devised to cope with exploitation, oppression, high cost of living and many other difficulties introduced by the social impact of the war, the war mobilization and the economic policies. This paper, based on new archival sources, reveals how the ordinary people’s daily resistance played a role in Turkey’s shift to a more liberal polity. It also shows how even under authoritarian governments the social resistance short of rebellion might influence politics albeit indirectly.