Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup d'Etat, and Memory in Turkey

by Christopher Houston

Overview

Based on extensive field research in Turkey, Istanbul, City of the Fearless explores social movements and the broader practices of civil society in Istanbul in the critical years before and after the 1980 military coup, the defining event in the neoliberal reengineering of the city. Bringing together developments in anthropology, urban studies, cultural geography, and social theory, Christopher Houston offers new insights into the meaning and study of urban violence, military rule, activism and spatial tactics, relations between political factions and ideologies, and political memory and commemoration. This book is both a social history and an anthropological study, investigating how activist practices and the coup not only contributed to the globalization of Istanbul beginning in the 1980s but also exerted their force and influence into the future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520343207
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	03/17/2020
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	242
Sales rank:	927,817
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Christopher Houston is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at Macquarie University in Sydney. He is the author of Kurdistan: Crafting of National Selves and Islam, Kurds and the Turkish Nation-State.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Prologue
List of Political Parties and Groups

1. Spatial Politics, Historiography, Method: Introduction
2. Activism, Perception, Memory: 12 Eylül Museum of Shame
3. De-Ottomanization, Modernism, Migration: A Selective History
of Istanbul, 1923–1974
4. Inscription, Sound, Violence: Militant Repertoires and the
Production of Space in Istanbul, 1974–1980
5. Gecekondu, Factory, Municipality: Three Fields of Spatial Politics
6. Militants, Ideologies, (F)actions: What Is to Be Done?
7. Pacification, Resistance, Reconstruction: Coup d’État,
City of the Fearful, 1980–1983
8. Phenomenology, Event, Commemoration: Conclusion

Epilogue
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Istanbul, City of the Fearless is a book that transcends disciplinary boundaries, and is useful as an exemplary framework to study political life and affect in contemporary Istanbul, as well as in other similarly complex geographies.”

International Journal of Middle East Studies