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17 - Reining in the Free Experiment

Discourses on Class Formation

from Part IV - Identities on the Mediterranean Shore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 October 2020

Malte Fuhrmann
Affiliation:
Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient (ZMO)
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Summary

While cultural practice in the Ottoman port cities showed a rather liberal blending of various shades of modernity, discourse produced by the middle classes intended to rein in the freedom identity development. In chastising mimicry of the West as well as insufficient mastery of modern etiquette, Turkish and Greek bourgeois picked up uponcriticism of port city society by foreign observers. The attribution of class characteristics to nations is also characteristic both of the foreign observers and the local middle class. Attempts to conform to international middle class standards is combined with the need for national distinguishability. Only in rare cases did individuals who did not comply with the conformity the middle class attempt to impose and out themselves as "super-Westernized."

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Port Cities of the Eastern Mediterranean
Urban Culture in the Late Ottoman Empire
, pp. 266 - 287
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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