Abstracts (İngilizce özetler)

Being the daughter who cared for her father: Anautoethnographic confrontation
SERPİL AYGÜN CENGİZ
In this autoethnographic article, the author explores a three-month period in 1988 during which she cared for her father, who was dying of cancer, addressing the experience both personally and within its broader cultural and political contexts. The text integrates evocative and analytic autoethnographic techniques: while the main narrative conveys the author’s personal experience, the footnotes offer an interpretive framework shaped by cultural, social, and gendered analyses. Care labor is framed as a collective practice embedded in class and gender codes, and the narrative structure deliberately diverges from the conventional academic format, adopting a fragmented and temporally discontinuous form. This stylistic choice both engages with new ethnographic directions that respond to the crisis of representation and reflects the fragility of personal memory and the discontinuities inherent in caregiving. The caregiving experience is constructed around ambivalent emotional states such as shame, anger, alienation, silence, and exhaustion. Far from being limited to physical labor, caregiving carries a significant emotional burden – one that is disproportionately placed on women. As a form of labor with economic implications, it is rendered invisible and devalued by the absence of state support and the institutional indifference that surrounds it. This article offers a critical perspective on the prevailing conditions, positioning care not merely as a private family duty but as a site of ethical and political reckoning.
Keywords: Caregiving, care labor, gendered care labor, evocative autoethnography, analytic autoethnography.

Care labor within the framework of social reproduction
MELDA YAMAN
The social reproduction approach and care work address similar issues, but they do not overlap completely. Social reproduction is a much broader concept that includes care work. While care focuses on interpersonal relationships, social reproduction encompasses the institutional structures, relationships, policies, and economic systems that reproduce social life. When we examine care from the perspective of social reproduction, the framework of care expands to care institutions, education and health systems, social policies, and immigration policies. In this way, it becomes possible to address how the care processes of people and households are transformed and reorganized, especially in the neoliberal era and under conditions of crisis, from a class and gender perspective. Such an approach can also draw attention to some of the most vital and distinctive aspects of caregiving that are often overlooked by the social reproduction approach.
Keywords: Care, ethics of care, social reproduction, women’s labor, neoliberal policies.

Care crisis and Turkey’s transforming care regime
BAŞAK AKKAN
In recent years, the concept of care crisis has received attention in the literature. Economic, demographic and social shifts –such as increased life expectancy, declining birth rates, an aging population and the rising participation of women in the labour market– have exposed the inadequacy of existing care arrangements. These pressures are increasingly reflected in narratives around the care crisis. This article examines Turkey’s care regime through the lens of the crisis narrative with a particular focus on childcare and long-term care policies introduced in the 2000s. Drawing on Nancy Fraser’s notion of “boundary struggles”, it explores the evolving contours of Turkey’s care regime in a context where the institutional boundaries between the state, market and family are increasingly blurred.
Keywords: Care crisis, care regime, care policies, boundary struggles.

The political economy of care in Turkey
ÇAĞLA ÜNLÜTÜRK
This article examines the care crisis in Turkey through a feminist political economy lens. It highlights how the inadequacy of public care services for children, the elderly, and disabled individuals results in women predominantly shouldering the care burden. The study analyzes three fundamental dynamics shaping this phenomenon: gendered familialism, the distorted commodification of care services, and the influence of Islamic conservatism. The state’s limited role in care provision combined with gendered familialism constrains women’s employment opportunities while exacerbating issues such as care poverty and time poverty. Arguing for the recognition of care as a fundamental right and its conceptualization as a public responsibility, the article proposes policy transformations to establish a sustainable care regime that prioritizes gender equality.
Keywords: Care regime, feminist political economy, gendered familialism.

Migrant domestic workers’ care labor: A twenty-five year assessment
AYŞE AKALIN
Migrant domestic workers are undoubtedly the first community that comes to mind when the term ‘care field’ is mentioned in Turkey today. This text will examine the basic dynamics of the care field and the transformations in these dynamics since the late 1990s when migrants started to be employed in Turkey. In doing so, my aim is to identify the basic elements that make up this field on the one hand, and to remind that these are not fixed but dynamic components on the other. This is because the period in question also coincides with the period in which Turkey has transformed from ‘a country that has only recently begun to receive migration’ (İçduygu, 2004) to ‘the destination of the world’s second largest migration corridor’ (McAuliffe and Oucho, 2024). In other words, the field of migration has become a place of so many variables over time that even though migrants working in domestic and care work constitute only a fraction of the total migrant population, the transformations in this field and the governance choices made in relation to them inevitably affect migrant domestic workers.
Keywords: Care, migrant domestic workers, population, governance, family.

Rethinking the conservative middle classes
AKSU AKÇAOĞLU
This article examines the relational reality of classes by focusing on the conservative middle classes in Turkey. In the relational sociology developed by Pierre Bourdieu, a collection of agents who possess a similar variety and volume of resources that are valuable in social life are not evidently social classes. These analytical classes on paper have a practical reality only when they are represented by a spokesperson. In Turkey, the transformation of conservative agents occupying middle positions in social space into a peculiar class was only possible through the political representation of the National Vision Movement. On the one hand, the conservative middle classes played a critical role in the institutionalization of the National Vision Movement through the ideas they developed and the support they gave, while the National Vision Movement played a major role in the expansion of the conservative middle classes and the shaping of their lifestyle through the policies it developed and the political representation it produced. Although this strong two-way relationship has remained stable until today, it has undergone significant transformations. In this article, I examine the transformations of the conservative middle classes over the last half century through the examples of Akevler Cooperative, founded in 1967 in Izmir, and Çukurambar, a former gecekondu neighborhood where multi-storey luxury buildings and housing estates mushroomed after the Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002. The article focuses on two critical roles played by the ties of political representation in the transformation of the conservative middle classes: First, it highlights the role of the educational policies developed by the National Order Party as part of the Nationalist Front coalitions during Turkey’s turbulent 1970-1980 period, which culminated in the rule of the Justice and Development Party, in increasing the relative value of conservative cultural capital and expanding the conservative middle classes. Second, it discusses the impact of the transition from the National Vision Movement to the Justice and Development Party on the lifestyle of the conservative middle classes and discusses the consequences of the transformation of dissident, solidaristic and ascetic lifestyle of the 1970-2000 period as it became compatible with market values after 2002.
Keywords: Pierre Bourdieu, conservative middle classes, Akevler Cooperative, National Vision Movement, Justice and Development Party, cultural capital.

Democratic backsliding in India under Modi: An analysis in the framework of ideas-interestsinstitutions
GÜLAY UĞUR GÖKSEL
This article examines the process of democratic backsliding in India in recent years. It explores the weakening of democratic institutions, the restriction of civil liberties, and the rise of a governance model based on Hindu nationalism since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), led by Narendra Modi, came to power. The article discusses how the Modi government’s authoritarian tendencies have been strengthened amidst increasing economic inequality, unemployment, and poverty, and the long-term implications of this trend for Indian democracy. Additionally, the BJP’s strategies for authoritarian governance, electoral successes, and public support are analyzed within the framework of ideas-interests-institutions, providing an assessment mof the democractic backsliding in India.
Keywords: Democratic backsliding, Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Hindu nationalism, authoritarian governance.