Papers by Efe Peker
Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 2024
Canada is often praised for successfully integrating ethnically diverse immigrants into its multi... more Canada is often praised for successfully integrating ethnically diverse immigrants into its multicultural nation, so successful indeed that the country has been considered an exception to the twenty-first-century right-wing populist wave. The recent ascent of political mobilization associated with right-wing populist repertoires across Canada, however, has exposed the need to revisit the exceptionalism thesis. With this goal in mind, our article examines the contemporary right-wing responses to the Liberal Party of Canada’s (LPC) post-2015 discourses and policies on immigration and multiculturalism. Building on existing scholarship, we first characterize the LPC’s approach as a nation-building project with strong middle-class partialities that emphasize high skills and human capital. We then explore how right-wing parties oppose or embrace this ‘middle-class nation-building’. Qualitatively analyzing the platforms of center-right parties and those further to the right at the federal and provincial levels (Alberta and Québec), we observe three prevalent response types: those that follow a cultural logic to prioritize identity and values, an economic logic to underline merit and contribution, or a combination of the two. Besides modulating the Canadian exceptionalism thesis, our findings complicate the assumed dichotomy between market-based and cultural forms of nationalism, as political actors can merge them in various permutations.
Politics, Religion & Ideology, 2024
This article addresses an understudied aspect of public secularity in the Canadian province of Qu... more This article addresses an understudied aspect of public secularity in the Canadian province of Québec, namely how its self-perception as a postcolonial nation vis-à-vis English Canada has shaped its secular state-building since the 1960s. In so doing, it shows that postcolonial legacies and imaginaries, a key theme for studying secularity in non-Western cases, may also prove productive for the North Atlantic world. The historical account proceeds in two parts. In the first period (1960-1980), the Quiet Revolution’s disestablishment of Catholicism was intimately linked to its anticolonial spirit, where the Church was identified as impeding development and self-determination. In the subsequent period (post-1980), the consolidation of Canadian multiculturalism and the rising accommodation demands of minority religions led to a contradictory form of ‘cultural defence’: an increased emphasis on Catholic heritage as well as on laïcité (state secularism), both deployed to underscore Québec’s unique society in distinction from English Canada. Exhibiting the consistent yet evolving effect of (post)colonial identity and memory in a North Atlantic example, and nuancing the concept of cultural defence by identifying its religious and secular forms, the article contributes to building a common vocabulary for the comparative analysis of secularities in Western and non-Western contexts.
Ethnic and Racial Studies, 2022
Secularist laws limit the public expression of ethnoreligious identities and reinforce symbolic b... more Secularist laws limit the public expression of ethnoreligious identities and reinforce symbolic boundaries excluding especially Muslims from the majority society. Existing scholarship has neglected the question of how Muslims respond to secularist restrictions and attendant political rhetoric. Drawing on in-depth interviews conducted in the Canadian province of Quebec, we find that some Muslims embrace political countermobilization (reactive ethnicity), while others downplay their faith to avoid discrimination (adjustment) and still others consent to restrictions (acceptance). We identify two mechanisms that explain why responses to restrictive policies diverge: individuals who (1) personally wear religious clothing or (2) have strong social ties to those who do usually experience restrictions much more negatively than those who do neither, and thus respond with reactive ethnicity or adjustment rather than acceptance. Locating political experience and behaviour in specific individual contexts, this article provides a path for advancing research on minority responses to restrictive policies and discrimination.
Religions, 2022
Why and in what ways do far-right discourses engage with religion in geographies where religious ... more Why and in what ways do far-right discourses engage with religion in geographies where religious belief, practice, and public influence are particularly low? This article examines religion’s salience in the rhetoric of leading right-wing populist parties in eight European countries: the Netherlands, Belgium, France, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. Based on a qualitative content analysis of various documents such as party programmes, websites, election manifestos, reports, and speeches of their leadership, the article offers insight into the functions that Christianist discourses serve for anti-immigration stances. The findings are threefold: first, they confirm previous research suggesting that while these parties embrace Christianity as a national/civilizational heritage and identity, they are also careful to avoid references to actual belief or practice. Second, the data suggests, their secularized take on Christianity rests not simply on the omission of theological content, but also on the active framing Christianity itself as an inherently secular and progressive religion conducive to democracy. Third, and finally, they starkly contrast this notion of Christianity with Islam, believed to be incompatible due to its alleged backward and violent qualities. Emphasizing religio-cultural hierarchies—rather than ethno-racial ones—plays an indispensable role in presenting a more palatable form of boundary-making against immigrants, and helps these parties mainstream by giving their nativist cause a liberal and enlightened aura. Preliminary comparisons with traditional conservative parties, moreover, reveal that while some of the latter partially embraced a similar nativism, variations remain across countries.
Comparative Sociology, 2021
Although the populism-religion relationship is increasingly recognized in the literature, the foc... more Although the populism-religion relationship is increasingly recognized in the literature, the focus has predominantly been on Western cases. This article proposes analytical tools for global comparisons. First, drawing on the ideational, performative, and strategic approaches to populism, the authors articulate how populists deploy religion in each category. Existing works have not engaged with these dimensions conjointly. Second, the authors employ this tridimensional conception to operationalize the "covert" and "overt" modes of religious populism identified in the literature. They hold that a populist movement comes closer to the former ("sacralizing the political") or the latter ("politicizing the sacred") depending on the extent to which it mobilizes religions in its ideas, performances, and strategies. Third, the authors exemplify these ideal types via two pairs of case studies: France and Québec (covert), and India and Turkey (overt). Finally, the authors consider how religious populisms elsewhere stack up on this spectrum, and discuss future themes for comparative research.
The American Sociologist, 2021
Despite being foundational for the origins of modern sociology, religion as a topic of inquiry an... more Despite being foundational for the origins of modern sociology, religion as a topic of inquiry and the sociology of religion as a subdiscipline have long remained relatively marginalized in the sociological field. Losing sight of sociology's profound initial engagement with religion, or a one-sided understanding of it as indifferent or unsympathetic towards the subject, may have contributed to this phenomenon. This article revisits early sociologists' and the larger family of social philosophers' involvement with religion to offer a more nuanced history. It argues that the religious question was crucial for the development of sociological thinking in three interrelated dimensions: epistemological, normative, and empirical. Epistemologically, social theorists questioned whether the scientific study of society was reconcilable with the premises of faith. Normatively, they were directly or indirectly involved with the question of whether religion should continue to exist and in what forms. Empirically, the main interest was how religion was changing via modernization, or whether it would survive it, which prompted methodological innovations and became the core of the secularization debate. Focusing on key social thinkers from the Enlightenment to the classics of the long nineteenth century, the article discusses the significance of the engagement with religion and secularity for the consolidation of sociology in these three dimensions, as well as its ongoing relevance for the discipline's future.
Social Policy and Society, 2020
This article traces the influence of Front National (FN) on the transformation of mainstream Fren... more This article traces the influence of Front National (FN) on the transformation of mainstream French narratives of laïcité since 1989, with particular attention to education policy. It argues that the FN's right-wing populist rhetoric, particularly the systematic securitisation of Islam as a threat to the 'people', facilitated the more widespread reframing of laïcité as a Republican defence mechanism, operating primarily through the school system. Laïcité was increasingly deployed in mainstream discourses and legislative measures to address two interrelated security concerns: the immediate safety of the school by the promotion of neutrality, and the overall wellbeing of the Republic via the prevention of radicalisation. Analysing this process in two specific periods (1989-2004 and 2005-2019), the article demonstrates that the FN's populist agenda came to be in a symbiotic relationship with the centre-right and centre-left parties. While established parties gradually incorporated the FN's securitisation narrative in their policymaking, the FN went through a process of 'normalisation' by claiming ownership of laïcité as a way to frame its anti-Islam stance in a more acceptable Republican discourse.
Social Science History, 2020
The literature on the development of secularism in Turkey, or laiklik, often cites the national s... more The literature on the development of secularism in Turkey, or laiklik, often cites the national state builders' positivist worldviews as a principal explanatory factor. Accordingly, the legal-institutional form Turkish secularism took in the 1920s and 1930s is derived, to a large extent, from the Unionists' and Republicans' science-driven, antireligious ideologies. Going beyond solely ideational narratives, this article places the making of secularism in Turkey in the context of the sociopolitical contention for national-capitalist state building. In so doing, the article contributes to the latest "spatiotemporal" turn in the secularization literature, characterized by an increased attention to historical critical junctures, and sensitivity to multiple secularities occurring in Western as well as non-Western geographies. Based on a bridging of the secularization scholarship with that of state formation, and building extensively on Turkish archival material, I argue that the trajectory, fluctuations, and contradictions of secularization can be closely associated with two intertwined master processes: (1) the construction of internal and external sovereign state capacity, and (2) geographically specific trajectories of class formation/dynamics. The Turkish case demonstrates that secular settlements cannot be explained away simply by reference to the guiding ideas of actors. Contentious episodes such as civil-bureaucratic conflict, war and geopolitics, and class struggles/alliances make a significant imprint on the secularizing process.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2019
The secularization literature increasingly recognizes the role of historical state-building proce... more The secularization literature increasingly recognizes the role of historical state-building processes and the manifest agency of sociopolitical actors in shaping public secularity. Based on archival data from the French Third Republic, this article offers three contributions to the historicizing agenda. First, to better capture the contingent and agency-driven nature of secularization, it reoperationalizes the concepts of separation and regulation as contentious strategies of state-building used toward religious authority. Second, it identifies and exemplifies four interrelated yet uneven spheres in which secularization is prompted through governmental action: politico-institutional, socio-pedagogical, symbolic-ideological, and property-distributional. Third, it suggests going beyond viewing secularizing agents as disconnected elites operating independently of grassroots movements. The French case shows that the Republicans' engagement with the pressures of various class forces had a significant impact on their secularizing policies. The analysis advances the study of the mechanisms whereby state-building engenders and mediates secularization as a nonlinear and heterogeneous process.
New Diversities, 2019
While the literature on right-wing populisms has focused on the phenomenon as an ideology, politi... more While the literature on right-wing populisms has focused on the phenomenon as an ideology, political style, and economic policy, populist interaction with religions, especially in non-Western cases, remains underexamined. Contributing to the study of religious populism, this article discusses the case of hindutva (Hindu nationalism) in India, concentrating on Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in power since 2014. From a social movements perspective, the analysis amalgamates three interrelated components: framing practices, mobilizing structures, and political opportunities. Regarding framing, the article deals with how the BJP redefines national identity and historical memory in exclusive association with Hinduism-at the expense of religious minorities. Concerning mobilizing structures, the BJP's grassroots network Sangh Parivar is examined as an extensive set of organizations promoting Hindu pre-eminence, as well as the personalized communication tools centred around Modi himself, fostering a quasi-sacralised image of the leader. Finally, post-1980 sectarian violence is recounted as a key political opportunity that facilitated the BJP's consolidation of power. Illustrating the aggressive articulation of Hinduism by the BJP via these three mechanisms, and incorporating an array of data such as the declarations of key figures in the movement, movement websites, newspaper articles, reports, as well as other historiographies and analyses, the article makes two theoretical propositions. First, it contends that a social movements outlook allows for a broader analysis of populism, one that takes into account grassroots forces and historical progression, which goes beyond understanding it merely as a rhetorical people-elite distinction. Second, it argues that religion warrants more attention in the literature as a cultural component of contemporary populisms. Shifting the focus to non-Western cases would help advance the study of the populism-religion nexus in its culturally and geographically variegated forms.
Nouveaux Cahiers du socialisme, 2020
Tous droits réservés © Collectif d'analyse politique, 2020
Arc—The Journal of the School of Religious Studies, 2018
Since the reasonable accommodation debates and the Bouchard-Taylor Commission in the 2000s, relig... more Since the reasonable accommodation debates and the Bouchard-Taylor Commission in the 2000s, religion and diversity have been at the forefront of the heated conversations on Québécois national identity. This paper offers a historical sociological perspective to place the recent religious diversity controversies in Québec in the progression of the province's national identity and state building processes since the Quiet Revolution. In doing so, it takes into account the dynamics of provincial state building in the larger Canadian context. Differentiating between economic, political, and cultural pillars of nation building, the paper makes the argument that throughout the 1980s and 1990s; the first two pillars gradually diminished in force due to neoliberal globalization and failed sovereignty attempts, respectively. This has since led to an overemphasis on the cultural pillar as the primary mobilizer of Québécois national identity, where, alongside language, the issue of religion has come to occupy a central place. Québec’s response to the prevalence of minority religions has engendered an unlikely combination: A rising emphasis on laïcité as a firmer policy framework of secularism on the one hand, and a “patrimonialised” rendition of the Catholic heritage on the other, both of which help underscore, in different ways, Québec’s unique cultural identity within Canada. The tools and methodologies of historical sociology may help advance our understanding of the reasonable accommodation conversation, as well as its contradictions.
Citation: Gürcan, Efe Can, & Efe Peker. (2015). A Class Analytic Approach to the Gezi Park Events: Challenging the Myth of Middle Classes. Capital & Class (Published Online Before Print).
Forthcoming, Capital & Class
2014 Albert Szymanski-T.R. Young/Critical Sociology Marxist Socio... more Forthcoming, Capital & Class
2014 Albert Szymanski-T.R. Young/Critical Sociology Marxist Sociology Graduate Student Paper Award
On 31 May 2013, what began as a localized demonstration against the demolition of a public park in Istanbul escalated into anti-government protests of unprecedented form and scale in Turkey’s modern history. The class configuration of the Gezi Park Events occupied the forefront of discussions within and outside of the Turkish Left. Mainstream accounts branded the events as an uprising of “middle classes” concerned almost exclusively about secularism. Drawing on a Poulantzasian/Wrightian framework, we argue that the Gezi Park Events can be reduced neither to a middle class nor a secularism-centered uprising. It represents an initiative of various wage-earning class fractions led by service sector employees and the educated youth, which rests on socioeconomic grievances of proletarianization under neoliberalism. Given the AKP’s politico-ideological subordination of an important segment of working classes through paternalistic labor relationships, conservative trade unionism, and religious-clientalist aid networks; the free articulation of class grievances was more likely for these secularly oriented wage-earning fractions, whose life chances were further encircled by the government’s conservative social interventionism. Gezi Park is thus a class reaction against the AKP’s “neoliberalism with Islamic characteristics” (Karaman, 2013). This paper’s original contribution is twofold. First, it provides a strong empirical analysis of the class structure of contemporary Turkey. Undoubtedly, this also helps explain the class-structural background and development of the Gezi protests. Second, the paper presents a Marxist analytical and empirical framework for class analysis with the aim of encouraging further research in the Marxist literature.
Praksis, Volume 22, Jan 2010
Bu çalışma, bugünkü küresel krizi Giovanni Arrighi'nin kapitalizmin tarihine ve neoliberalizmin b... more Bu çalışma, bugünkü küresel krizi Giovanni Arrighi'nin kapitalizmin tarihine ve neoliberalizmin bu tarih içindeki yerine dair kuramsallaştırmasından yola çıkarak ele alacaktır. Arrighi'ye göre kapitalizmin tarihi, farklı dönemlerde hegemonik devletlerin şekillendirdiği, birbirini izleyen "sistemik birikim döngüleri"nden oluşur. Her birikim döngüsü "maddi genişleme" ile başlayıp "finansal genişleme" ile sürer. Bunların ilkinde yatırımlar ağırlıklı olarak meta üretimi ve ticarete yönelir ve görece refah sağlanırken, zamanla artan uluslararası rekabet ve sınıf mücadeleleri sonucunda düşük kâr bunalımına girildiğinde, sermaye spekülatif yatırımlara yönelir. Arrighi finansal genişlemelerin tarihte küresel hegemonik dönüşümlere kapı araladığını ve halihazırdaki hegemonun "sonbaharına" işaret ettiğini vurgular. Buna göre neoliberalizm, içinde bulunduğumuz ABD sistemik birikim döngüsünün finansal genişleme dönemi olarak kavramsallaştırılır. Neoliberal finansallaşmanın bugünkü darboğazı, daha geniş bir bağlamda, yani Afganistan ve Irak işgalleriyle sarsılan ABD hegemonyasının "ölümcül krizi" ile birlikte düşünülmelidir. Çalışma, Arrighi'nin bu kuramsal çerçevesine dayanarak bugünkü küresel krizi hegemonya ilişkileri bağlamında ele alacak; potansiyel çalışma alanı olarak, yeniden yapılandırılarak önemi artırılan G-20'yi ve Çin'in yükselişini incelemenin önemine dikkat çekecektir.
Books by Efe Peker
In Challenging Neoliberalism at Turkey's Gezi Park, Gürcan and Peker focus on Turkey's struggle a... more In Challenging Neoliberalism at Turkey's Gezi Park, Gürcan and Peker focus on Turkey's struggle against "neoliberalism with Islamic characteristics", and ask what material, objective, and subjective factors account for the emergence and persistence of this robust protest cycle. The authors also study the effect the movement has had on the development of collective leadership mechanisms and political consciousness that can potentially alter the configuration of social forces in the country. Through a Marxist political sociological perspective, the authors shed light on the class basis, conjunctural underpinnings, organizational forms, and political expressions of the Gezi Park Protests as an exceptional cycle of mass mobilization in neoliberal times. http://www.amazon.com/Challenging-Neoliberalism-Turkeys-Gezi-Park/dp/1137469013/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421096465&sr=8-1&keywords=gezi+gurcan
Book Reviews by Efe Peker
Journal of the Ottoman and Turkish Studies Association, 2021
Akan, Murat (2017) The Politics of Secularism: Religion, Diversity, and
Institutional Change in F... more Akan, Murat (2017) The Politics of Secularism: Religion, Diversity, and
Institutional Change in France and Turkey. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Revue Internationale de Politique Comparée, 2020
Christophe Jaffrelot (2019) L’Inde de Modi : National-populisme et démocratie ethnique. Paris : F... more Christophe Jaffrelot (2019) L’Inde de Modi : National-populisme et démocratie ethnique. Paris : Fayard.
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Papers by Efe Peker
2014 Albert Szymanski-T.R. Young/Critical Sociology Marxist Sociology Graduate Student Paper Award
On 31 May 2013, what began as a localized demonstration against the demolition of a public park in Istanbul escalated into anti-government protests of unprecedented form and scale in Turkey’s modern history. The class configuration of the Gezi Park Events occupied the forefront of discussions within and outside of the Turkish Left. Mainstream accounts branded the events as an uprising of “middle classes” concerned almost exclusively about secularism. Drawing on a Poulantzasian/Wrightian framework, we argue that the Gezi Park Events can be reduced neither to a middle class nor a secularism-centered uprising. It represents an initiative of various wage-earning class fractions led by service sector employees and the educated youth, which rests on socioeconomic grievances of proletarianization under neoliberalism. Given the AKP’s politico-ideological subordination of an important segment of working classes through paternalistic labor relationships, conservative trade unionism, and religious-clientalist aid networks; the free articulation of class grievances was more likely for these secularly oriented wage-earning fractions, whose life chances were further encircled by the government’s conservative social interventionism. Gezi Park is thus a class reaction against the AKP’s “neoliberalism with Islamic characteristics” (Karaman, 2013). This paper’s original contribution is twofold. First, it provides a strong empirical analysis of the class structure of contemporary Turkey. Undoubtedly, this also helps explain the class-structural background and development of the Gezi protests. Second, the paper presents a Marxist analytical and empirical framework for class analysis with the aim of encouraging further research in the Marxist literature.
Books by Efe Peker
Book Reviews by Efe Peker
Institutional Change in France and Turkey. New York: Columbia
University Press.
2014 Albert Szymanski-T.R. Young/Critical Sociology Marxist Sociology Graduate Student Paper Award
On 31 May 2013, what began as a localized demonstration against the demolition of a public park in Istanbul escalated into anti-government protests of unprecedented form and scale in Turkey’s modern history. The class configuration of the Gezi Park Events occupied the forefront of discussions within and outside of the Turkish Left. Mainstream accounts branded the events as an uprising of “middle classes” concerned almost exclusively about secularism. Drawing on a Poulantzasian/Wrightian framework, we argue that the Gezi Park Events can be reduced neither to a middle class nor a secularism-centered uprising. It represents an initiative of various wage-earning class fractions led by service sector employees and the educated youth, which rests on socioeconomic grievances of proletarianization under neoliberalism. Given the AKP’s politico-ideological subordination of an important segment of working classes through paternalistic labor relationships, conservative trade unionism, and religious-clientalist aid networks; the free articulation of class grievances was more likely for these secularly oriented wage-earning fractions, whose life chances were further encircled by the government’s conservative social interventionism. Gezi Park is thus a class reaction against the AKP’s “neoliberalism with Islamic characteristics” (Karaman, 2013). This paper’s original contribution is twofold. First, it provides a strong empirical analysis of the class structure of contemporary Turkey. Undoubtedly, this also helps explain the class-structural background and development of the Gezi protests. Second, the paper presents a Marxist analytical and empirical framework for class analysis with the aim of encouraging further research in the Marxist literature.
Institutional Change in France and Turkey. New York: Columbia
University Press.