Notes on the cultural representations
of the poor-subaltern in Turkey
NECMİ ERDO⁄AN
Designed to formulate the problematic of a research project about the political and cultural representations of the urban poor in Turkey, this working paper calls for listening to the “small voices of history” as well as for criticising the fobic, romantic-populist, technicist and ampiricist fantasms of the discourses about the poor. What is needed is to trace the ways in which the poor-subaltern receive or signify the social processes of exclusion and marginalisation. Mapping cultural representations of the poor-subaltern would indicate that they cannot be totally incorporated by the “dominant ideology”. The poor-subaltern are neither agents of hidden resistance ever ready to get activated and mobilised nor pure victims of ideological manipulation or absorption. The practices of everyday life and “affective economies” of the poor-subaltern suggest that they rather make do with the power edifice in numerous subtle ways. Even if they speak a language borrowed from political, religious or televisual discourses, the latter still remains foreign to their tongue, and is haunted by the spectre of “another justice.”
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Traditional welfare regime of Turkey
in the face of economic crisis
AYŞE BU⁄RA
This paper considers social and human consequences of the current economic crisis in Turkey by discussing the limitations of the traditional welfare regime of the country in providing support to individuals in risk situations, i.e. to the unemployed, disabled, elderly or the poor in general. It is argued that the traditional welfare regime of Turkey has largely been based on informal networks of reciprocity. Not only have relatives, neighbors or members of ethnic and religious communities been very important in determining the livelihood of the individual and the mechanisms on which (s)he relies in coping with risk situations, but the role of the state in the economy, too, has been shaped according to the family model and defined by informal relations of trust, loyalty and solidarity. Given the fiscal crisis of the state and the pressures emanating from newly emerging demographic patterns, a certain transformation of this particular welfare regime, whereby such informal relations would be replaced by formal institutional arrangements, appears to be necessary. In the paper this necessary institutional transformation is discussed in terms of “upscaling the country’s social capital”. The paper predicts that social and human consequences of the economic crisis would be aggravated by this coincidence of conjunctural instability with secular transformation.
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The power-based network relations among
the urban poor after 1980: The case of Sultanbeyli
MELİH PINARCIO⁄LU and O⁄UZ IŞIK
This paper is an attempt to analyse the structure of these networks and the strategies of the urban poor to survive and to minimise their economic vulnerability with particular attention to Sultanbeyli, a squatter district in İstanbul where strong entrepreneurial activities and the informal networks of the poor have come to interplay. Considering the general logic of poverty research which primarily focuses on the positions of the poor with an aim to create taxonomies, one may say that this research does not only dwell upon the positions, but also movements of the poor in urban systems. In doing so, the thrust of the paper is to analyse poverty in a dynamic way, which makes possible for us to trace downward and upward movements of the poor in their poverty scale, spanning from losers to accommodators and even follow their mobility to higher quality of lives.
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Two definitions of poverty and a suggestion
AHMET İNSEL
The difference between the poverty of a developing country and the poverty of a developed one limits the measurements and analyses of world poverty. The difference between these two poverties existing in two different economic structures coincide, in some measure, with the difference between absolute and relative poverty lines. Thus, the mixed poverty line in which these two lines are expressed within the same poverty equation, enables us to measure the number of poor people in the world more acurately and watch the changing poverty profiles. The results of research on mixed poverty line show that programs for overcoming poverty should be multidimensional. In overcoming poverty, development policies alone are not enough and policies that regulate income distribution are required. Poverty and inequality, two different facts in essence, cross at this point.
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Global poverty and United Nations
YEŞİM M. ORUÇ
The essay reviews the concepts of human development and human poverty. The United Nations and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) in particular have promoted these two concepts in the global development agenda. These concepts allow for a more comprehensive look at the multiple dimensions of human well being and deprivation and for an understanding of development that goes beyond quantifying people and their human suffering with income values alone. These concepts and the development thinking enjoined to them have allowed the UN system and the UNDP to place some ‘values’ in the global development agenda. Yet the challenge of Africa is insurmountable with available policies and means. The globalization process is discussed from the human development and poverty perspective.
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New urban poverty and “the scavengers”
(street waste pickers)
H. NEŞE ÖZGEN
Over the last decade, researchers studying migration and its consequences had to consider a “new strata” in the ‘centre’ since the New Economy Politics (NEPs) delocated the masses towards the metropolis. Studies on the “new strata”, described and reconceptualized the new urban poors. The concept of “new urban poverty” explains the new context better than the former concepts like “faux frais of the capitalist production” (Marx), “unwanted classes” (Westergaard; Jenks and Peterson), “the disadvantaged” (UN), “non-labor” (Parkin), “underclass” (Myrdal), and “spare labour market” (Granovetter). The concept of urban poverty is not only refining the quantitative measurements for defining the classes but also making some further ‘socius’ visible in the cities.
This article focuses on the concept of ‘new urban poverty’ based on a field study performed in two cities (Denizli and Samsun). In that field study, formal and informal power relations and patterns in “urban solid waste management and scavengers” are observed. The study also specifies the concept of ‘scavenger’ (‘the animal that feeds on garbage’ in jargon) as an agent to explain how they are articulated as unneeded, unseen and unwanted ‘ones’.
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Poor households, poor women
FUNDA ŞENOL-CANTEK
Home designates woman and housewife designates deprivation. Putting of woman in the private space due to her housewife role deprives her of public life. These deprivations eventually turn to be the reasons of lower quality of life.
This study is based on data obtained from 50 poor housewives living in Mamak, Keçiören and Balgat quarters in Ankara; in depth interview method is used. These women with a monthly income less than 100 USD, have to bare additional responsibilities such as motherhood, wifehood and daughterhood. These unfavorable conditions are tried to be revealed by in depth interviews with women who reproduced such house practices in their everyday life.
These interviews indicate that housewives are negatively affected by poverty and their spiritual and pyhsical health is seriously damaged due to the financal limitations that keep them away from public sphere. Such deprivations eliminate the possibilities of the works they wish to be free from or to be free to perform. Spending their time and effort almost wholly for the maintenance of the household, they are deprived of all their personal desires. And certain cultural and moral values make these conditions bearable.
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Poverty and richness in the novels
A. ÖMER TÜRKEŞ
The inclusion of the poor in the novel begins in the 19th century. The major signs of poverty are streets, quarters and houses. At the beginning of the 20th century social realist trend put poverty at the center of the novel as a political and class issue. After the Second World War, the poor people of the underclass transferred to the literatures of the Third World. The Ottoman-Turkish novel which imitates the Western novel, used class difference as a sign of cultural difference, the difference between the East and the West. Streets, houses, furniture and clothes were used to explain the class differences. Until 1960s, rich-poor dichotomy was mostly elaborated in “village novels”. The transformation in 1950s –industrialization, migration to cities, gecekondus- was reflected in the novels. The East-West dichotomy left its place to the eploited-exploiter dichotomy and Orhan Kemal was one of the prominent novelists who expressed the new spaces both in the cities and in the villages. In the novels and stories of Orhan Kemal, Sabahattin Ali and Sait Faik, poverty is hidden in simple details, some images, and people’s behaviours; because of its hidden character it is apparent. In post-1980 novels, when economic instabilities and inequalities rise, this hiddenness and apparentness became a character of richness, and poverty is excluded from the novels.
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Poverty in Turkish cinema and the poor heroes
HİLMİ MAKTAV
Kemalist regime didn’t use cinema as an ideological tool. Although moviemakers had not realized the ideological function of cinema as an art, the popular Turkish cinema described a model of society in which there is no “class conflict” as was imagined by the Kemalist ideology. Even in the stories of “the conflict between richness and poverty creating an impossible love”, and “a society where poor and rich came closer” poverty was not taken from a class perspective and wasn’t seen as a social problem; on the contrary, it was made invisible. Poverty was put as a problem in the Kemalist–left’s socialist-realistic films of 1960’s. Especially in village films, the story told was of poor villagers who were exploited by landowners. Social realistic tendencies could be observed also in city films. Stories of people who migrated from rural areas to the city were presented. Yılmaz Güney was the first director who described the misery of poverty. In general, Güney chosen subordinated poor people as heroes; he brought poverty as a social problem and had become the leader of Turkish Revolutionary Cinema. In the films of 70’s, the influence of rising leftist ideology can be observed. In 80’s, these poor heroes left their place to the comic heroes of Social Comic Films. The aim of such films was to criticize the widespread individualistic mentality and capitalist structure but the characters were passive and because of this, poverty was presented only as an entertaining element. After 1980’s, the poor characters started to lose their effectiveness. In the films of 90’s poverty is aestheticized and poor characters lost their popularity.
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Women, poverty and strategies of survival
in 18th century Salonica
EYAL GINIO
Solitary women and orphaned children were perceived in Ottoman Salonica as the most powerless members of society. Consequently, they were singled out in the charity discourse as the ultimate recipients for formal charity. However, a clear disparity existed between the theory of charity and its practice. Formal charity was overwhelmingly bestowed on the pious poor who held positions in the city religious institutions. The broad population of poor was relegated to the margins of the charity market.
Most poor people had to negotiate a variety of strategies in order to survive. However, while men could track down and embrace various labour options, women had much more limited choices. Domestic service was one of the few employments performed in Salonica by poor women and mostly by young girls. Their position clearly demonstrates the plight of the marginalized poor girls and women. Being detached from their family at a young age, these girls had to struggle alone in precarious conditions and in clearly unequal power relations.
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“Othering” of poverty in a world where
realities are “stylised”
MERYEM KORAY
Poverty is not only a social problem, but also a global problem which is mainly a result of this global economic order. The economic growth as a nature of capitalism greatly depends on the global and social inequalities. Especially in the current globalization process these inequalities increased and wealth transfer from the poor countries to the rich ones grew. As a conclusion beside the widening gap between the poor and rich countries the poverty and deprivation from the main living conditions of poor people are extending in the worldwide. The only meaningful way to fight againt this polarization and increasing poverty in the world seems to consider and to apply the human rights as a whole. Therefore the global world and humanity need a revolutionist approach regarding human rights. It must be revolutionist; because this approach has to accept the economic-social rights as inevitable and complementary for the basic human rights and additionally it is required to put them into effect at the global level beside the national level and also to demand their realization from the global economic order beside the national and political authorities. This means we need a new understanding and a rule of order at the global level which accepts the superiority of the whole human rights.
