Ahmet Öncü

Wither Business Ideology: Revisiting Veblen's Theory of Engineers as Revolutionary Actors

Each major work of Veblen is a theoretical step taken further towards the solution of the problem already posed in The Theory of the Leisure Class: the continuity of the habit of invidious comparison that renders humans self-centric agents. Veblen, by juxtaposing “engineers” to the pecuniary class, sought to illustrate a contingency for the negation of invidious comparison, which may eradicate the legitimacy of business ideology and its reckless and futile end of accumulation of personal wealth.

From the Morality of Living to the Morality of Dying: Hunger Strikes in Turkish Prisons

Political hunger strikes have been part of the debates on human rights in many countries around the world. This paper explores the preconditions for and motives behind hunger strikes in Turkey by conceiving the hunger strikers as a part of citizenship politics through which strikers not only express their views against certain common issues, but also declare total opposition to an unjust condition within their political community. The paper focuses on the question of why some such “citizens” choose to participate in hunger strikes, which appears as an individual commitment to achieve a certain common objective. In doing so, the meaning of the experiences of hunger strikers and their universal right to live are elaborated in relation to their political and moral views. Hunger strikes are suggested to be seen as voluntary fasting, undertaken as a means of civil disobedience against an injustice within the context of citizenship. As examples of non-violent political acts, hunger strikes are not only part of citizenship politics but also expressions of commitment to achieving ones goals through non-aggressive means for the common good of all citizens. Moreover, they can also be considered examples of martyrdom/heroism because hunger strikers altruistically risk their life for a public cause. As a particular altruistic act, hunger strikes can also be viewed as an effective form of communication directed toward fellow citizens. Moreover, they are expressions of self-determination for having control over and for ones own life conditions. Finally, hunger strikes can be conceptualized as a struggle for transforming the configuration of structures and practices of citizenship about which one is passionately concerned. In this context, hunger strikes seem to be struggles for recognition in a relationship between two subjects, in which one subordinates the other.

On the possibility of a 'Soviet of technicians': Veblen's cumulative causation applied to the Turkish case

Contrary to his theoretical expectations, Veblen provided various reasons as to why a revolutionary overturn by the technicians was a remote possibility in America. In contrast to the American engineers, the engineers of Turkey have constructed an engineering outlook commensurate with Veblen’s abstract line of reasoning and participated in a political struggle against business interests. In this paper, using Veblen’s cumulative causation methodology, a theoretical answer for the origin, growth, persistence, and variation of the anti-business engineering outlook in Turkey is suggested.

Turkish Social Political Economy History in the Light of Dugger’s Reconstructed Concepts of Veblenian Institutionalism

As part of his quest to bring radicalism back into institutionalism, William M. Dugger has not only corrected the revisions made in Veblen’s original anarchist–socialist scheme after his death, but...

Nouveaux Riches of the City of Minarets and Skyscrapers: Neoliberalism and the Reproduction of the Islamic Middle Class in İstanbul

We focus on the middle class to help better understand the peculiarities of contemporary Turkish society in relation to the dominant neoliberal mode of capital accumulation. We depict processes of cultural reproduction of the middle class in order to provide an account of an on-going social formation driven by the emergence of an Islamic bourgeoisie. We revisit the debate on conceptualizing the middle class and present some of the major findings of our survey of middle class households in İstanbul in a comparative manner to specify differences and similarities among the ‘new’ laic and Islamic middle class factions that have benefited economically, socially, and culturally from the neoliberal regime. Based on our survey, we suggest that in each faction a new middle class reflecting neoliberal values and lifestyles emerged and separated itself from the rest. Thus, although they have had different ideological and cultural pasts and orientations, both the laic and Islamic factions of the new middle class converged into a new status group as the nouveaux riches of the neoliberal landscape.

Anger in Search of Justice: Reflections on the Gezi Revolt in Turkey

This paper focuses on the underlying motivation behind the participation of individuals in what came to be known as the Gezi Revolt. The Gezi Revolt was the expression of anger in response to a perceived social injustice. Those who participated in the uprising aimed not only to enforce political change but also to restore justice in their society through struggle and moral expression. Gezi represents the weaving together of moral, cognitive, and emotional responses. Anger and fury were the two particular emotions that provided a sense of urgency among a large section of people across the land and led to the building of a social network of individuals through which sharing stories and expressing feelings turned into practices of moral progress. The paper discusses how the participants of “the Gezi Community” were able to put aside their before identitiesand hold back their unpleasant and dividing emotions to one another.