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Kinship, Primordial Ties, and Factory Organization in Turkey: An Anthropological View

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2009

Alan Dubetsky
Alan Dubetsky
Affiliation:
New York University
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Extract

The social organization of industrial work in Turkey provides us with an interesting case for the examination of the relationship between established social forms and meanings and the technological ad organizational exigencies of economic production. The organization of Turkish industrial production is, on the one hand, clearly an outgrowth of the technological apparatus that was imported from the Vest in the process of development since the nineteenth century. On the other hand, it is also deeply rooted in an indigenous social structure and culture. In this paper I hope to outline the interrelationship between these diverse factors.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , July 1976 , pp. 433 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1976

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References

1 The fieldwork on which this study is based was carried out in Turkey between November 1969 and July 1971 under a grant from the National Institute of Mental Health. An earlier version of this paper was delivered as part of a panel on “Social Class in the Middle East” at the sixth annual meeting of the Middle East Studies Association of North America, held in Binghamton, New York, November, 1972. I thank the members of the panel for their helpful suggestions. This paper was accepted for publication in 1973.Google Scholar

2 Second Five Year Development Plan, 1968–72 (Ankara: The State Planning Organization, 1969), pp. 399–401.Google Scholar

3 Ingham, Geoffrey K., Size of Industrial Organization and Worker Behaviour (Cambridge University Press, 1970), p. 29.Google Scholar

4 Michel Crozier emphasizes such cultural factors in his well-known study of the French bureaucracy. As he notes, “through studying bureaucracy as a cultural phenomenon, we are trying to show that, contrary to what ethnocentric tendencies lead one to believe, these processes are not uniform, and that, in any given society, they are closely linked with basic personality traits, social values, and patterns of social relationships” (The Bureaucratic Phenomenon [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1964], p. 237.Google Scholar

5 The following are among the most prominent publications on the gecekondu: Yörükan, Turhan, Gecekondu ve Gecekonth Bölgelerinin Sosyo-Kültürel Özellikleri (Ankara: Іmar ve Іskâ;n Bakanliği Mesken Genel Müdürlüğü, 1968);Google ScholarYasa, Іbrahim, Ankara'da Gecekondu Alielcri (Ankara: Akin Matbaasi, 1966);Google ScholarHart, Charles W. M., Zeytinburnu Gecekondu Bölgesi (Іstanbul, Ticaret Odasi, 1969);Google ScholarSewell, Granville H., “Squatter Settlements in Turkey: Analysis of a Social, Political, and Economic Problem,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, M.I.T., 1964Google Scholar Also see Karpat, Kemal, “Gecekondu Meselesi,” Milliiyet (06 15–30, 1969); Kent Topraklai Sorunu Komisyonu (Ankara, Mimarlar Odasi, 1969);Google ScholarSuzuki, Peter, “Encounter with Istanbul: Urban Peasants and Village Peasants,” International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 5 (1964) 208–216,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and idem, “Peasants without Plows: Some Anatolians in Istanbul,” Rural Sociology, XXXI, 4 (1966), 428–438.

6 For a more complete discussion of these problems, see Dubetsky, A., “A New Community in Istanbul: A Study of Primordial Ties, Work Organization, and Turkish Culture,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Chicago, 1973.Google Scholar

7 See, for example, Dincer, Nabi, “Kamu Sektöründe Sevk ve Іdareciliğin Gelismesine Engel Olan Faktörler,” a paper read at the second congress of the Turkish Management Association (II Türkye Sevk ve Іdarecilik Kongresi) September, 1970, by the director of the research bureau of the Social Planning Office of the State Planning Organization, pp. 1–2 (mimeographed);Google ScholarPresthus, Robert V., “The Social Basis of Bureaucratic Organization,” Social Forces, 38, 3 (1969), 103–111,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Bradburn, Norman M., “Interpersonal Relations within Formal Organizations in Turkey,” Journal of Social Issues, 19, 1 (1963), 61–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 I use “primordial ties” as a general reíerent for highly personalized social relationships which are usually though not necessarily derived from certain ascriptive qualities of the individuals involved, which tend to be characterized by a high degree of subjective evaluation of persons, and which are multistranded, such as kinship relationships, or relationships based on regional bonds (heşerilik), and to a lesser degree friendship.Google Scholar

9 See, for example, Parsons, Talcott, Structure and Process in Modern Societies (New York, Free Press, 1960);Google Scholar, The System of Modern Societies (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: PrenticeHall, 1971);Google ScholaridemSmelser, Neil J., Social Change in the Industrial Revolution (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1959);Google Scholaridem, The Sociology of Economic Life (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963). For a review of the intellectual history of these ideas see Spiegel, Henry William, “Theories of Economic Development: History and Classification,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 16, 4 (1955) 518–539;CrossRefGoogle ScholarBendix, Reinhard, “Tradition and Modernity Reconsidered,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 9, 3 (1967), 292–346,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Weinberg, Ian, “The Problem of the Convergence.of Industrial Societies: A Critical Look at the State of a Theory,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 11 (1969), 1–15. This type of teleological argument is not limited to the structural-functionalists such as Parsons and Smelser. Karl Marx also clearly viewed the nature and direction of social change in developed societies as a model for such change in developing societies when he wrote of the laws of capitalist production “working with iron necessity towards inevitable results.” He continued: “The country that is more developed industrially only shows to the less developed, the image of its own future” (Preface to the First German Edition of the First Volume of Capital, in Karl Mar x and Frederick Engels: Selected Works (New York: International Publishers, 1969), p. 231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Durkheim, Emile, The Division of Labor in Society (New York: Free Press, 1964), p. 262.Google Scholar

11 Smelser, Social Change in the Industrial Revolution, p. 2.Google Scholar

12 See Abegglen, J. C., The Japanese Factory: Aspects of Its Social Organization (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1958);Google ScholarNakane, Chie, Japanese Society (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1970);Google Scholar and Singer, M. B., “The Indian Joint Family in Modern Industry,” in Singer, M. B. and Cohn, B. S., eds., Structure and Change in Indian Society (Chicago: Aldine Press, 1968), 423–452.Google Scholar

13 Güzelbahçe is a pseudonym, as is Aktepe, the name of the community. The names of individuals mentioned in the paper are also pseudonyms.Google Scholar

14 This is a pseudonym as are the names of all firms mentioned in this paper. Çelik Esya Sanayii Kollektif Sirketi is hereafter referred to as Çelik Esya.Google Scholar

15 For a discussion of the use of these terms see Meeker, Michael E., “The Black Sea Turks: Some Aspects of Their Ethnic and Cultural Background,” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 2, 4 (1971), 320–323.Google Scholar

16 Turkish Village (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1965), p. 81.Google Scholar

17 For an interesting discussion of this phenomenon see Kiray, M. B., Ereğli: Ağir Sanayinden Önce Bir Sahil Kasabasi (Ankara: Deviet Planlama Teşkilâti, 1964), PP. 61–62.Google Scholar

18 Sertel, Ayse, “Politics of Fictive Kinship in Eastern Turkey,” a paper delivered at the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association, Seattle, Wash., 1968, p. 2.Google Scholar

19 Though equal status partnerships predominate, it is the differential status relationships that are particularly significant.Google Scholar

20 Sertel, “Fictive Kinship,” p. 2.Google Scholar

21 Nakane, Japanese Society, pp. 40–97.Google Scholar

22 Aile translates as family and is used as a referent both for what we term nuclear and extended families.Google Scholar

23 “Kinship, Friendship and Patron-Client Relations in Complex Societies,” in Banton, Michael, ed., The Social Anthropology of Complex Societies (London: Tavistock Publications, 1966), p. 9.Google Scholar

24 I follow more or less the Weberian definition of patriarchalism here, namely that it is a system of authority exercised by an individual in a kinship (or primordial) relationship with those over whom he holds this authority; that it is exercised theoretically in the interests of the members of the group, and that it is on their willingness to respect his authority, based upon the leader's traditional status in relation to them, that this authority restsGoogle Scholar (Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, [New York: Free Press, 1947], p. 346).Google Scholar

25 “Social and Cultural Factors Affecting the Emergence and Functioning of Innovators,” The Turkish Administrator: A Cultural Survey (Ankara: USAID, n.d.), p. 141.Google Scholar

26 Ibid.

27 I am indebted to Professor Lloyd A. Fallers for encouraging me to pursue this line of thinking.Google Scholar

28 Turkish villagers view this as a distinction between tohum (seed), clearly a male symbol, and tarla (field), a female symbol. It is, they say, of course the nature of the tohum sown not the tarla in which it is sown that determines the crop that is to spring up. The tarla is merely a receptacle of varying quality.Google Scholar

29 Weber, Social and Economic Organization, pp. 26 ff.Google Scholar

30 This is because the lines of sect, occupation, and region are often the same, a phenomenon not unfamiliar in the Islamic world.Google Scholar

31 The relationship between class loyalties and the primordially based groups that we have seen to be the foci of great loyalty and commitment on the part of individuals in these communities is a subject of great importance both for our understanding of the structure of Turkish society, and for evaluating the utility of a class model for the analysis of that society and societies similar to it. For a discussion of some of these issues in relation to the Middle East as a whole,Google Scholar see Bill, James A., “Class Analysis and the Dialectics of Modernization in the Middle East” International Journal of Middle East Studies, 3, 4 (1972), 417–434.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a discussion of historical aspects of these issues, see Mardin, şerif, “Historical Determinants of Stratification: Social Class and Class Consciousness in Turkey,” Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi Dergisi, 22, 4 (1967), 112–142,Google Scholar and Mardin, Şerif, “Power, Civil Society and Culture in the Ottoman Empire,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 11, 3 (1969), 258–281.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

32 At the time this article was written martial law was still in effect in the province of Istanbul. Martial law has since been lifted, and the unions have again become active. It has not, however, been possible to undertake further field research in Turkey on the nature of this renewed activity.Google Scholar