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Information or Culture: The Intellectual Dissemination of Americanism as Common Sense

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2016

Ela Kaçel
Ela Kaçel*
Affiliation:
Bahçeşehir University, Faculty of Architecture and Design, Çırağan Caddesi Osmanpaşa Mektebi Sokak No: 4-6, 34353 Beşiktaş, İstanbul, Turkey
*
[email protected]
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Abstract

The discourse of postwar modern architecture is dominated by historical accounts that easily describe the processes of modernization in Turkey during the Cold War as a unilateral flow of ideas and expertise from the United States. Yet, the relation between benefactor and beneficiary is much more complex. This article explores culture production as a state function and intellectual practice through which bureaucrats and intellectuals representing the state agencies disseminated Americanism as common sense in postwar Turkey. Drawing on the cultural activities of two parallel organizations, the Turkish Information Office (TIO) acting in New York and the United States Information Service (USIS) in Turkey, it illustrates how the intricate relations among ideology, politics, and architecture affect the practices of bureaucrats and their audiences in the process of culture production. Promoting ideologies of Americanism, these organizations simultaneously popularized American architects and their buildings to their audiences. The comparative analysis of two case studies, the photo book Talking Turkey by the TIO and the Architecture Series of the Voice of America Forum Lectures, demonstrates how the division created between information and culture as two separate functions of foreign diplomacy perpetuated similar divisions in architectural discourse such as the iconic and the ordinary.

Keywords

Americanismforeign diplomacypostwar modern architecturecultural politicsUnited States Information ServiceTurkish Information Office
Type
Articles
Information
New Perspectives on Turkey , Volume 50: Special Issue on “Ambivalent Architectures” from the Ottoman Empire to the Turkish Republic , Spring 2014 , pp. 171 - 188
Copyright
Copyright © New Perspectives on Turkey and Cambridge University Press 2014

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