Date: Wed, 23 Sep 1998 12:53:15 +0300 (EET DST)
From: Emrah Goker <egoker-AT-Bilkent.EDU.TR>
Subject: Religious Practices as a Field




On Tue, 22 Sep 1998, Kent Strock wrote:

> As an anthropologist with a philosophical background the attempt to
> operationalize Habitus has proven a challenge...in both making it an
> ethnographic tool while maintaining the philosophical import within the
> confines of the paper and the academic field.  Many Americans have had a
> very difficult holding the thing together, prefering to extract a single
> concept and refusing B. relational thinking. My present problem of
> studying Amish society and its increased integration into capitalism and
> various strategies employed by agents has neccesitated operationalizing
> B..The best empirical and ethnographic operationalization of Bourdieu that
> I have found, after much work is Cheleen Mahar's article concerning
> Mexican migration.  It can be found in Urban Anthropology Fall 19992 p.
> 275.  Altho she is a bit week on the phenomonology her use of habitus and
> field is superb.  Does anyone else have suggestions for "good" uses of B.
> in an ethnographic setting??/
> kent strock

Although I am not currently doing ethnographic research, I am working on
the construction of a particular Muslim sect (Alevis) as a field. Last
year, in the squatter housing areas of Ankara (the Turkish capital), we
have conducted a sociological research and were in contact with first and
second generation Alevis who had migrated from poorer parts of Turkey. We
found "life history" method quite illuminating in studying lower class
Alevis there.

I do not know if what I tell is helpful for studying the Amish people, yet
during our field studies, we have found similar patterns of urban
integration, socialization and further similarities in the process 
of squatter house building (in Turkey, most of the squatter houses are
built by the immigrants themselves, and illegally on Treasury Lands). It
was possible for us, from the interviewees' life histories, to distinguish
between different types of capital, in Bourdiean terms. Thus, the squatter
areas defined as an urban sub-structure, we could define the particular
class habituses (mostly of lower and middle-lower class origin).

With respect to Alevism, that religious sect was, on the individual level,
providing a whole set of dispositions, attitudes, habits, etc. with regard
to urbanization processes and literally, to whole "life". Alevis,
teologically, are quite different than Sunnis (and outside Turkey, all the
fuss you hear about Laicist-Islamist, or Army-Islamist conflicts are
caused by Sunni radicals: Alevis are historically the  suppressed Other of
the more crowded Sunni sect), having a "deconstructed" view of God and an
egalitarian approach towards human relations. 

Nowadays, I am working on the skeleton of my master's thesis, where I am
planning to investigate whether Alevism can be defined as a field. It is
really a hard job: There are many power games played on lower class
Alevis, and played by a broad set of players: Richer Alevis, Social
Democrats, Central Right, Fascist Right, Socialists, Sunnis, the Army...
So I am asking to myself if Bourdieu is the answer here... There is also
Touraine's approach of "social movements", and I am wondering if that
would be more appropriate in understanding Alevis.

Emrah Goker
     


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