Publications
Peer-Reviewed Publications
(Forthcoming) From Secularization to Religious Resurgence: An Endogenous Account, Theory and Society.
What accounts for the resurgence of religion in Muslim countries that pursue strict secularization policies? Theories of religious resurgence have emphasized secular differentiation, religious growth, and pietist agency as animating sources behind politically engaged religions. Extending this work, I advance a typology of strategies oppositional actors employ to produce and sustain religious politics. I ground my approach in the study of Islamic resurgence in Turkey during the twentieth century. Drawing on published primary sources, secondary historiography, and multi–sited fieldwork, the analysis shows that Turkish Islamists spearheaded successful resurgence not only by capitalizing on exogenous “opportunities” that punctuated the “repressive” pathway but, more importantly, by pursuing endogenous institutional change. Even though secularizing agents impaired the religious field’s autonomy, dissidents avoided open confrontation with the state. Instead, they positioned themselves within official institutions (embedding, layering), changed their logic (conversion), and supplemented these institutions with alternative ones (substitution). As a result, religious actors turned Islam into an ideological and material counterattack on the regime’s secular institutions. These insights can be extended to religious mobilizations throughout the Muslim world as well as to non–religious social struggles beyond it.
(2022) When Global Scripts Do Not Resonate: International Minority Rights and Local Repertoires of Diversity in Southern Turkey, Qualitative Sociology 45(1): 149-187 (with Matthias Koenig). Article link.
Under what conditions do global scripts resonate among ordinary people? Neo-institutional world polity theory has tended to sideline this question by privileging macro-comparative explanations of states’ adoption and social movement activists’ framing of global scripts. Adopting a negative case approach, we draw on concepts from cultural sociology to explain why global scripts fail to resonate among ethno-religious minorities in Antakya, Turkey. Antakya has been exposed intensely to global minority rights and multiculturalism discourses; it has been targeted by various ethnic movement activists, and its diverse population has long experienced stigma and discrimination stemming from Turkey’s model of nationhood. Yet, ordinary people there have seldom utilized global diversity scripts in their everyday struggles for recognition. Drawing on longitudinal qualitative fieldwork between 2004 and 2015, we find that global scripts fail to match people’s cultural schemas of perceiving and reproducing boundaries—their local repertoires of diversity—due to a deep-seated ambivalence toward the category of “minority.” This lack of resonance potentially weakens popular support for substantial policy reforms advancing minority rights and is one among several factors explaining why Turkey’s turn from an exclusionary to an inclusionary model of nationhood has remained largely ceremonial.
(2021) Meaning of a Textbook: Religious Education, National Islam, and the Politics of Reform in the United Arab Emirates, Nations and Nationalism 27(4): 1181-1197 (with Sharif Hassan). Article link.
The organization and content of Islamic education have been an object of Western scrutiny based on claims linking religious education to radicalism. Many Arab Gulf states have responded to such allegations with significant overhauls of their religious curricula. This article focuses on the politics of education reform in the United Arab Emirates. A detailed coding and analysis of 1500 pages of Islamic education textbooks reveal that religious education is a deeply politicized field. However, it promotes loyalty rather than radicalism. The reformed curriculum is used as a pedagogic tool by the state to advance national interpretations of Islam in support of domestic and international policy objectives, such as strengthening national identity against sub-national loyalties, securing political legitimacy, pacifying opposition, rebranding the state’s international image, and spurring economic development. This article advances the existing scholarship by bringing in the international dimension of domestic education reform and the precise mechanisms that we call emulation and generalization through which Islamic knowledge becomes functionalized for the state’s nationalist goals.
(2015) Maintaining ethnic boundaries in “non-ethnic” contexts: constructivist theory and the sexual reproduction of diversity, Theory and Society 44(1):33-64. Article link.
How can ethnic boundaries survive in contexts of legal racial equality and institutionalized ethnic mixing? Constructivist theories of ethnicity have long emphasized the fluidity, rather than the durability, of ethnic boundaries. But the fact that ethnic boundaries often endure--and even thrive--in putatively non-ethnic political contexts suggests the need for sustained attention to the problem of boundary persistence. Based on an ethnographic study of ethnic boundaries in the Turkish case, this article argues that the regulation of the domain of sexuality and marriage can play a critical role in reproducing boundaries when political institutions neither acknowledge nor aid in the survival of ethnic diversity. Ultimately, the data provide substantial evidence that the transmission and internalization of informal rules of inter-ethnic sexual conduct are central to boundary maintenance.
Book Chapters, Book Reviews, and Other Publications
Forthcoming. "Working for God (and Country): Religious Education and Economic Diversification in the United Arab Emirates." In Social Change in the Gulf Region: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Mizanur Rahman and Amr Al Azam, Singapore: Springer Nature (with Sharif Hassan).
(2013) From religious schooling to mobilization in a secular state. Perspectives on Europe 43 (1): 145-149
(2012) Review of “Islam’s Marriage with Neoliberalism: State Transformation in Turkey.” (by Yıldız Atasoy) New Perspectives on Turkey 46(2): 250-53.
In the Pipeline
Mobilization under Stress: Islamist Collective Action in Turkey (Revise and Resubmit)
Culture, Politics, and Islamist Mobilization in Turkey (book manuscript)
A Cultural Theory of Mobilization (journal manuscript)
Peer-Reviewed Publications
(Forthcoming) From Secularization to Religious Resurgence: An Endogenous Account, Theory and Society.
What accounts for the resurgence of religion in Muslim countries that pursue strict secularization policies? Theories of religious resurgence have emphasized secular differentiation, religious growth, and pietist agency as animating sources behind politically engaged religions. Extending this work, I advance a typology of strategies oppositional actors employ to produce and sustain religious politics. I ground my approach in the study of Islamic resurgence in Turkey during the twentieth century. Drawing on published primary sources, secondary historiography, and multi–sited fieldwork, the analysis shows that Turkish Islamists spearheaded successful resurgence not only by capitalizing on exogenous “opportunities” that punctuated the “repressive” pathway but, more importantly, by pursuing endogenous institutional change. Even though secularizing agents impaired the religious field’s autonomy, dissidents avoided open confrontation with the state. Instead, they positioned themselves within official institutions (embedding, layering), changed their logic (conversion), and supplemented these institutions with alternative ones (substitution). As a result, religious actors turned Islam into an ideological and material counterattack on the regime’s secular institutions. These insights can be extended to religious mobilizations throughout the Muslim world as well as to non–religious social struggles beyond it.
(2022) When Global Scripts Do Not Resonate: International Minority Rights and Local Repertoires of Diversity in Southern Turkey, Qualitative Sociology 45(1): 149-187 (with Matthias Koenig). Article link.
Under what conditions do global scripts resonate among ordinary people? Neo-institutional world polity theory has tended to sideline this question by privileging macro-comparative explanations of states’ adoption and social movement activists’ framing of global scripts. Adopting a negative case approach, we draw on concepts from cultural sociology to explain why global scripts fail to resonate among ethno-religious minorities in Antakya, Turkey. Antakya has been exposed intensely to global minority rights and multiculturalism discourses; it has been targeted by various ethnic movement activists, and its diverse population has long experienced stigma and discrimination stemming from Turkey’s model of nationhood. Yet, ordinary people there have seldom utilized global diversity scripts in their everyday struggles for recognition. Drawing on longitudinal qualitative fieldwork between 2004 and 2015, we find that global scripts fail to match people’s cultural schemas of perceiving and reproducing boundaries—their local repertoires of diversity—due to a deep-seated ambivalence toward the category of “minority.” This lack of resonance potentially weakens popular support for substantial policy reforms advancing minority rights and is one among several factors explaining why Turkey’s turn from an exclusionary to an inclusionary model of nationhood has remained largely ceremonial.
- Best Scholarly Article Award (honorable mention), Global and Transnational Sociology Section, American Sociological Association, 2022
(2021) Meaning of a Textbook: Religious Education, National Islam, and the Politics of Reform in the United Arab Emirates, Nations and Nationalism 27(4): 1181-1197 (with Sharif Hassan). Article link.
The organization and content of Islamic education have been an object of Western scrutiny based on claims linking religious education to radicalism. Many Arab Gulf states have responded to such allegations with significant overhauls of their religious curricula. This article focuses on the politics of education reform in the United Arab Emirates. A detailed coding and analysis of 1500 pages of Islamic education textbooks reveal that religious education is a deeply politicized field. However, it promotes loyalty rather than radicalism. The reformed curriculum is used as a pedagogic tool by the state to advance national interpretations of Islam in support of domestic and international policy objectives, such as strengthening national identity against sub-national loyalties, securing political legitimacy, pacifying opposition, rebranding the state’s international image, and spurring economic development. This article advances the existing scholarship by bringing in the international dimension of domestic education reform and the precise mechanisms that we call emulation and generalization through which Islamic knowledge becomes functionalized for the state’s nationalist goals.
(2015) Maintaining ethnic boundaries in “non-ethnic” contexts: constructivist theory and the sexual reproduction of diversity, Theory and Society 44(1):33-64. Article link.
How can ethnic boundaries survive in contexts of legal racial equality and institutionalized ethnic mixing? Constructivist theories of ethnicity have long emphasized the fluidity, rather than the durability, of ethnic boundaries. But the fact that ethnic boundaries often endure--and even thrive--in putatively non-ethnic political contexts suggests the need for sustained attention to the problem of boundary persistence. Based on an ethnographic study of ethnic boundaries in the Turkish case, this article argues that the regulation of the domain of sexuality and marriage can play a critical role in reproducing boundaries when political institutions neither acknowledge nor aid in the survival of ethnic diversity. Ultimately, the data provide substantial evidence that the transmission and internalization of informal rules of inter-ethnic sexual conduct are central to boundary maintenance.
Book Chapters, Book Reviews, and Other Publications
Forthcoming. "Working for God (and Country): Religious Education and Economic Diversification in the United Arab Emirates." In Social Change in the Gulf Region: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Mizanur Rahman and Amr Al Azam, Singapore: Springer Nature (with Sharif Hassan).
(2013) From religious schooling to mobilization in a secular state. Perspectives on Europe 43 (1): 145-149
(2012) Review of “Islam’s Marriage with Neoliberalism: State Transformation in Turkey.” (by Yıldız Atasoy) New Perspectives on Turkey 46(2): 250-53.
In the Pipeline
Mobilization under Stress: Islamist Collective Action in Turkey (Revise and Resubmit)
Culture, Politics, and Islamist Mobilization in Turkey (book manuscript)
A Cultural Theory of Mobilization (journal manuscript)