Turkey

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO


HORIZONS AND HISTORIES OF LIBERAL PIETY:
CIVIL ISLAM AND SECULARISM IN CONTEMPORARY TURKEY


A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO
THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES
IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

BY
JEREMY F. WALTON


CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
DECEMBER 2009












































Copyright © 2009 by Jeremy Walton
All Rights Reserved
Table of Contents


Acknowledgements………………………………………………………………………………v

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………………...viii

Introduction.   A Saturday Night Promenade, on both Sides of the Bosporus……………….1

Chapter One.   Civil Islam and Liberal Piety in the Context of the Secular and the Laicist……..………………………………………………………………………………………9

  Introduction: A Rare Site of National-Laicist Homogeneity………………………………….9

  Rethinking the Ethnography of Secularism and Islam: ‘The Secular’ vs. ‘the Laicist’……..11

  Turkish Politics of Piety and the Civil Society Effect……………………………………….19

  Liberal Piety, Preliminarily………………………………………………………………......31

  Pious Communities and Civil Institutions:   A Brief Sociology and Prehistory of Liberal Piety………………………………………………………………………………………….36

      The Nur Community: Quietist Revivalism and the Ethical Centrality of the Individual………………………………………………………………………………...38

      The Gülen Community:   Pious Pedagogy and Global Horizons for Liberal Piety………41

      Alevism: Civil Society as Means to a Minority Politics of Cultural-Religious Recognition..……………………………………………………………………………..46

  A Brief Note on Methodology and the Organization of the Argument……………………...51


Chapter Two.   Liberal Piety as a Genre of Publicness……………………………………….54

  Introduction: Pious Publicness as Emergent Practice and Ideal……………………………..54

  Conversations in the Evening:   The Exemplary Liberal Piety of the Risale-i Nur...