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Oğuz Alyanak
I am a cultural anthropologist whose research spans labor migration, urban studies, religion, and masculinity. For my dissertation research, I studied the Turkish community in Strasbourg, focusing on men’s night lives, and exploring the moral tenets of male socialization primarily in three domains: work, home, and the outside. As part of this research, I worked at a döner kebab shop, and socialized with Turkish men in their workspaces and after work in their homes, mosque associations, coffeehouses, and migrant-populated neighborhoods (quartiers), as well as their automobiles, joining my interlocutors for car rides to various venues in Strasbourg, France, its German neighbor, Kehl, and other cities in the Franco-German borderland. I have also collaborated with a Strasbourg-based documentarist to produce an ethnographic documentary on migrant socialization in Koenigshoffen, aka “quartier Istanbul,” a neighborhood in Strasbourg (KHF 2018). I am currently working on a book manuscript and academic articles based on this research.
Following my PhD (WUSTL 2019), I moved to Germany as a Volkswagen Stiftung postdoctoral fellow (University of Göttingen 2019/2020). Starting April 2021, I have taken on a postdoctoral researcher position at the Fairwork project, joining a team of scholars to explore working conditions in platform work/the gig economy in Germany. I am also a visiting researcher of the “Globalization, Work, and Production” research group at the WZB/Berlin Social Science Center.
Supervisors: John Bowen
Address: 1 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JS, UK
Following my PhD (WUSTL 2019), I moved to Germany as a Volkswagen Stiftung postdoctoral fellow (University of Göttingen 2019/2020). Starting April 2021, I have taken on a postdoctoral researcher position at the Fairwork project, joining a team of scholars to explore working conditions in platform work/the gig economy in Germany. I am also a visiting researcher of the “Globalization, Work, and Production” research group at the WZB/Berlin Social Science Center.
Supervisors: John Bowen
Address: 1 St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3JS, UK
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This dissertation is a collection of stories of Muslim Turkish men in Strasbourg who sin. And repent. And then, sin again. The men whose stories I recount are not much different than other men of faith in that they live their lives fearing an authority: God/Allah. Almost all of them are cognizant that the eternal rewards they will get in Cennet, that is, the Heaven, outcompete the luxuries they can enjoy in this world. And that means that they would have to suffer now in order to find comfort in the afterworld. Yet, the desires of the mortal body are often times too hard to tame. And that is not only because the joys in life are too tempting. It is true that the youth want to “live life.” That piety can wait. And sins are to be committed in their journey to old age. But it is also that the intimacies and respect my interlocutors seek at work, at home, or even at the mosque, are sometimes simply lacking. Hence, they situate themselves in venues where they attain the fulfillment that they seek. The caveat, however, is that these venues are often inviting of sins. Even a place as seemingly innocuous as the coffeehouse can encourage activities that are condoned such as cigarette smoking, or illicit and therefore forbidden, such as alcohol consumption. Or a night that starts at a place like a coffeehouse can lead to a night out with friends to bars, nightclubs, casinos or brothels, all of which are a short car ride away. So, should these men simply refrain from visiting these places? Some do. But for many others, such limits on the self are futile. This dissertation is written with the intention of exploring such men’s lives, and to provide an account of their moral failures, that is, their failures to be/come better Muslims, and their struggles amidst these failures.
This dissertation is a collection of stories of Muslim Turkish men in Strasbourg who sin. And repent. And then, sin again. The men whose stories I recount are not much different than other men of faith in that they live their lives fearing an authority: God/Allah. Almost all of them are cognizant that the eternal rewards they will get in Cennet, that is, the Heaven, outcompete the luxuries they can enjoy in this world. And that means that they would have to suffer now in order to find comfort in the afterworld. Yet, the desires of the mortal body are often times too hard to tame. And that is not only because the joys in life are too tempting. It is true that the youth want to “live life.” That piety can wait. And sins are to be committed in their journey to old age. But it is also that the intimacies and respect my interlocutors seek at work, at home, or even at the mosque, are sometimes simply lacking. Hence, they situate themselves in venues where they attain the fulfillment that they seek. The caveat, however, is that these venues are often inviting of sins. Even a place as seemingly innocuous as the coffeehouse can encourage activities that are condoned such as cigarette smoking, or illicit and therefore forbidden, such as alcohol consumption. Or a night that starts at a place like a coffeehouse can lead to a night out with friends to bars, nightclubs, casinos or brothels, all of which are a short car ride away. So, should these men simply refrain from visiting these places? Some do. But for many others, such limits on the self are futile. This dissertation is written with the intention of exploring such men’s lives, and to provide an account of their moral failures, that is, their failures to be/come better Muslims, and their struggles amidst these failures.
This paper is based on a love story that not only connects Turkey and France, but also transgresses cultural norms that shape social relations in a rural Central Anatolian village. I am interested in how the village youth—consisting of male and female members of the community aged 18 to 25—situate themselves in a highly regulated social space and create opportunities to communicate with each other. In my case, what makes this village unique is that it has traditionally been a hub for outmigration to urban centers in Turkey as well as Europe, and continues to serve this purpose today. Based on participant observation and interviews with married and unmarried youth of both genders as well as their parents, I hope to illustrate how gender and honor code are interpreted and negotiated on an everyday basis. The relationship between Mehmet and Hatice provides a good starting point to talk about these larger questions.
However, hizmet’s emergence also comes at the expense of other institutions representative of Turkey in North America. The rise of hizmet affiliated institutions engender vocal resistance among those whose capacity to control the narrative is limited by the introduction of competitive actors. Cemal Bey’s story, therefore presents a window to analyze the ongoing clash over the semantic space of religion and the homeland between old and new actors. My research, which is based on ethnographic research conducted on two Turkish American institutions in a Midwest/North American town, provides snapshots from this clash.