Tracing cultural change in the reproduction of intolerance : 'secularism', 'Islamism' and others in Turkey’s experience of democratization

Abstract

How do cultural resources such as values and beliefs, and their functions in ideology-making, change? In the democratization literature, the value-based approach to culture seeks cultural change based on values. However, the combination of this approach with value-surveys fails to consider several ways in which change may unfold between cultural periods. Instead, this study will delve into a history of conversational texts, which are endogenously grounded within culture, capable of demonstrating culture in action and reflecting what is collective about culture as it operates through dialectical encounters. I focus on change in three landscapes of culture in Turkey, which have witnessed some of the most persistent stories of the unequal relationship between the self and the other.