Foreword by Marcel van der Linden

Görkem Akgöz

Foreword by Marcel van der Linden

Görkem Akgöz

2024, Foreword by Marcel van der Linden

visibility

…

description

3 pages

link

1 file

"In the Shadow of War and Empire is undoubtedly a landmark in the social historiography of the Global South." Marcel van der Linden

Görkem Akgöz - 978-90-04-68714-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 12/16/2023 08:26:38PM via Open Access. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 Foreword Görkem Akgöz has written an important and original book. Not only is the subject new, so is the methodology used. She explores new paths and she does so convincingly. Her greatest merit is probably that she connects two spheres that usually remain separate: on the one hand, the “public” sphere of economic development, industrial politics, and business management—what Marx called the “noisy sphere, where everything takes place on the surface and in full view of everyone”—and on the other hand, “the hidden abode of production, on whose threshold there hangs the notice ‘No admittance except on business’.” Akgöz places the developments in one textile company in Istanbul, the Bakırköy Cloth Factory, in a broad economic and political context from the 1840s onward. She situates the fortunes of the enterprise and its workforce during the downturn and collapse of the Ottoman Empire and in the subsequent state-led industrialization in Republican Turkey until the 1950s. Creatively exploiting hitherto unused sources, she then leads the reader in the second part into the everyday world of the women, men and children within the company walls, their lives, problems, ambitions and actions. She has an eye for contradictions and differences. The workers about whom she has been able to find biographical data— often only after persistent sleuthing—are described as individuals with their individual idiosyncrasies, some very courageous, others less so. Always Akgöz guards against stereotypes and simplifications. By tracing the lines of development from the mid-nineteenth to the midtwentieth century, Akgöz mines new ground, for as she herself rightly writes, the story of Turkish industrial relations in the 1930s and ‘40s is “a largely neglected history.” In recent decades, Turkish labour history has undergone tremendous development. After earlier historians had already explored institutional aspects, others have expanded the field to broader questions, concerning labour relations and workers’ struggles. But this initially focused on the Ottoman period and the first years of the Republic. Akgöz follows subsequent developments, during the world economic crisis and etatist attempts at import substitution. In doing so, she simultaneously lays the groundwork for a more in-depth analysis of Turkish society after World War ii. By paying attention both to wider social relations and to the feelings and actions of concrete workers, Akgöz makes the age-old opposition between structure and agency manageable. Historians are constantly faced with a dilemma: the more they focus on real individuals the more social processes and structures on a larger scale move to the background. And the more intensely Görkem Akgöz - 978-90-04-68714-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 12/16/2023 08:26:38PM via Open Access. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 xii Foreword they focus on structures and large-scale processes the more individual actors with their personal histories are erased. Each approach has its price. Akgöz does not choose either approach, but combines them fruitfully. In doing so, she adopts a feminist perspective. She recognizes that the working class is extremely heterogeneous and complex at all levels. She leaves the “single-axis framework” of the “white, male industrial worker” behind and sketches a multi-dimensional picture of interacting factors that, in combination, keep people in subordinate social positions in different ways. Akgöz exposes intersections between class, gender, religion, ethnicity, and age, among others. The analysis of such intersections is difficult. It has even been argued, that it is almost impossible to simultaneously keep more than two concepts such as gender and class in play. Akgöz’s study nevertheless succeeds in unifying the importance of aspects heuristically. With her creative and complex approach, Akgöz demonstrates that while a single narrative can never tell the whole story, a so-called Grand Narrative remains possible. Like spotlights, each separate perspective generates a great deal of light, but also leave something in the shade and may even blind the observer. In combination however they can create an unprecedentedly rich picture. In the Shadow of War and Empire is undoubtedly a landmark in the social historiography of the Global South. Marcel van der Linden International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam Görkem Akgöz - 978-90-04-68714-1 Downloaded from Brill.com 12/16/2023 08:26:38PM via Open Access. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0

Log In

Foreword by Marcel van der Linden

Related papers

Related papers

Related topics