Fragments of Culture: The Everyday of Modern Turkey

This volume is one of several very fine collections on contemporary Turkish culture and politics that has come out recently. Like most of them, there is a strong emphasis on urban living, and particularly, on Istanbul. This volume is particularly strong on issues of popular culture and its interaction with gender and class. While the essays are not not consistently strong, many are very useful for the classroom because they bring to life central questions in contemporary culture. Individuals with a scholarly interest in modern Turkey will almost certainly find something of value here. Its contents include: The new middle class and the joys of suburbia / Sencer Ayata -- The doorkeeper, the maid and the tenant: troubling encounters in the Turkish urban landscape / Gul ?zyegin -- Encounters at the counter: gender and the shopping experience / Ayse Durakbasa and Dilek Cindoglu -- Discipline, success and stability: the reproduction of gender and class in Turkish secondary education / Feride Acar and Ayse Ayata -- Playing games with names / Serif Mardin -- 'I dance folklore' / Arzu ?zt?rkmen -- The film does not end with an ecstatic kiss / Se?il B?ker -- Global consumerism, sexuality as public spectacle, and the cultural remapping of Istanbul in the 1990's / Ayse ?nc? -- The Islamist paradox / Jenny B. White -- The markets for identities: secularism, Islamism, commodities / Yael Navaro-Yashin -- 'We pray like you have fun': new Islamic youth in Turkey between intellectualism and popular culture / Ayse Saktanber -- Pink card blues: trouble and strife at the crossroads of gender / Deniz Kandiyoti -- A table in two hands / Ayse Simsek ?aglar -- Negotiating identities: media representation of different generations of Turkish migrants in Germany / Lale Yal?in-Heckmann.