Welfare as Gift: Local Charity, Politics of Redistribution, and Religion in Turkey

Hilal Alkan

Open Access Published by De Gruyter 2023

Welfare as Gift

Local Charity, Politics of Redistribution, and Religion in Turkey

Hilal Alkan
Funded by: Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient

Volume 46 in the series ZMO-Studien

https://doi.org/10.1515/9783111156552

Overview
Contents

About this book

The welfare regime in Turkey has been undergoing a radical transformation since the early 2000s. Welfare provisions, especially poverty alleviation schemes, are increasingly framed as gifts, and select civil society organisations have assumed the state’s welfare provision functions through non-transparent public funding. Waqf, the Islamic institution of endowment, has played an important role in this transformation. It provides both the institutional frame of operations and the religious imaginary signification that interpellates subjects to take part as givers and receivers of gifts. This material exchange of care and money through newly configured gift-relations between the providers and beneficiaries constitutes not only a realm of politics but also a site of ethical negotiations with embodied consequences.

This book is based on an extensive ethnographic study conducted between 2008-2009 among the charitable organizations of Kayseri, a central Anatolian city with booming industry and a majority conservative political orientation. A stronghold of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power in Turkey since 2002, the city has showcased the tenets of the welfare transformation that is to come, even in the early stages of AKP rule. With a focus on the daily practices within the field of beneficence, the book investigates the gift circuits that bring together central state institutions, municipalities, local notables and business people, religious groups, volunteers and employers of charitable organisations, and the urban poor. In these gift circuits, objects, money, services, prayers, recognition, and political and social influence flow in various directions through formal and informal routes. The book illustrates the growing significance of these particular forms of gift-giving in the field of poverty alleviation and welfare provision in Turkey and their role in the drastic political transformation of the country.

Author / Editor information

Hilal Alkan, Leibniz Zentrum Moderner Orient, Berlin, Germany.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	I
Content Publicly Available Download PDF	VII
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	IX
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	XI
Introduction Open Access Download PDF	1
1 Fields and Methods Open Access Download PDF	25
2 Waqf as Institution and Imaginary Open Access Download PDF	45
3 Hizmet: A Contested Ethos of Service Open Access Download PDF	65
4 “Our Poor”: Criteria, Entitlement, and Justice Open Access Download PDF	93
5 Embodied Ethics of Being a Vakıfçı Open Access Download PDF	119
Epilogue Open Access Download PDF	143
Bibliography Open Access Download PDF	147
Index Open Access Download PDF	161

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: De Gruyter
Audience: Scientists in Arabic, Islamic and literary studies, sociologists, cultural scientists
Pages
- Front matter: 14
- Main content: 162
Keywords: Welfare; Neoliberalism; Social assistence; Turkey

eBook

Published: December 31, 2023
ISBN: 9783111156552

Hardcover

Published: December 31, 2023
ISBN: 9783111138169