Fragments of Culture

"This is one of my favourite books and an excellent gateway to Turkey’s social, cultural, and political complexity. It is composed of numerous articles by leading scholars in different fields and is therefore, quite multi-disciplinary. Herein you will read well-observed and well-analysed essays on a variety of subjects, ranging from language to cinema, black humour to the globalised new middle class. When it was first published it was a true groundbreaker and is today still very relevant and informative. There are two other reasons why I recommend this book. Firstly, it quite innovatively focuses on the sociology of daily life in an ever-shifting, ever-changing society. ‘Daily life’ is an area that has generally been ignored in the literature on Turkey. Many of the books about the country tend to concentrate on its political machinery, state institutions, and/or ideological formation. But as you turn the pages of this book you will feel the pulse of the society. Secondly, this book is gender sensitive. There is no other way to put it. There are several essays that deftly analyse the inner workings of a patriarchal society. Not only that; those identities that have been marginalised and have formed subcultures of their own, like the transsexuals of Istanbul. I would put a rainbow flag somewhere on the cover. So for me Fragments of Culture portrays a colourful, diverse, dynamic and shifting society with its many actors and conflicts."