Cultural Sociology
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A Cultural Map of Turkey
Bruce Rankin, Murat Ergin and Fatos Göksen
Cultural Sociology 2014 8: 159 originally published online 18 July 2013
DOI: 10.1177/1749975513494878
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494878CUS8210.1177/1749975513494878Cultural SociologyRankin et al.
2013
Cultural Sociology
2014, Vol. 8(2) 159 –179
A Cultural Map of Turkey © The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/1749975513494878 cus.sagepub.com
Bruce Rankin
Koç University, Turkey
Murat Ergin
Koç University, Turkey
Fatoş Gökşen
Koç University, Turkey
Abstract
There is a growing body of empirical research on national patterns of cultural consumption and how they are related to social stratification. This paper helps to broaden the basis of comparison by focusing on cultural patterns in Turkey, a developing, non-Western, and predominantly Muslim context. Our analysis of cultural tastes and activities using data from a new nationally-representative survey shows three broad cultural clusters that clearly map onto differential positions in the social structure and are largely differentiated by degree and form of engagement with Turkey’s emerging cultural diversity, particularly their orientation towards Western cultural forms.
In general, local cultural modalities do not distinguish groups, attesting to the robustness of local culture. The results are discussed in light of previous work on cultural patterns in other national contexts.
Keywords
Bourdieu, correspondence analysis, cultural omnivore, Islam, secularism, Turkey
Corresponding author:
Bruce Rankin, Department of Sociology, Koç University, Rumeli Feneri Yolu, Sariyer-Istanbul, 34450, Turkey. Email: brankin@ku.edu.tr
Introduction
Sociologists have long known that systems of inequality have a cultural dimension and that inequalities are reproduced by hierarchies of taste, lifestyle, and morality (Bourdieu, 1984; Lamont, 1992). This insight has fueled interest in understanding how cultural distinctions are formed, with a focus on identifying salient social and demographic variables thought to shape the acquisition of taste and other cultural boundary-making processes that reinforce stratification systems.
A key question in this research area is the degree to which cultural hierarchies map onto stratification systems. Bourdieu’s (1984) initial claim of a strong ‘homology’ between social position and cultural tastes and participation, such that high social strata tend to consume ‘high culture’ and lower strata consume low or ‘popular’ forms of culture, has been challenged by more recent findings that suggest a weakening of rigid cultural boundaries. With the rise of alternative bases for identity construction (e.g. gender, ethnicity, age, etc.), the link between class and/or social status and lifestyles and tastes in contemporary societies is thought to be even more attenuated.
This study will examine the relationship between social stratification and cultural consumption patterns in Turkey. What makes the Turkish case compelling is the mixture of different cultural traditions in a contentious public space. Turkey’s experience with modernity turned the ‘West’ into a viable model; yet, a vibrant local culture continued to exist side by side, and sometimes in intense conflict with cultural forms perceived to be Western. The Turkish cultural landscape has changed significantly following the country’s economic liberalization in the 1980s, and an assessment of its contemporary cultural field is timely. We expect that an examination of the linkages between cultural and social hierarchies will contribute to the literature on Turkish cultural studies, as well as expand the basis for cross-national comparison. Extending the scope of studies will provide a more nuanced understanding of cultural patterns and trends among countries with differences in levels of development, cultural traditions, and systems of social stratification.
The present study is an exploratory analysis intended to identify broad cultural groups in Turkish society. Using recently collected nationally representative survey data and analytic techniques pioneered by Bourdieu, we examine a wide range of cultural tastes and participation to assess whether meaningful clusters of cultural consumption and lifestyle are evident in Turkish society, what they represent, how prevalent they are, and how well they map onto sociological variables highlighted in previous research. We end with a discussion of the implications for theoretical models and findings from studies in other settings.
Social Stratification and Cultural Consumption
Much of the research on cultural boundaries takes as its starting point the work of Bourdieu (1984), whose work showed that cultural differences are not trivial but are important distinctions used for constructing and maintaining class boundaries, and, as such, help to reproduce systems of stratification. His study of taste distinctions in French society showed a homology between social class position and cultural consumption, with individuals coming from higher social class locations having taste preferences for ‘high’ culture, while those from lower classes mostly consuming ‘low’ or ‘popular’ cultural forms, distinctions that helped to reinforce the French class structure.
Bourdieu, however, was aware that his findings were rooted in a specific social and historical context, and, indeed, more recent research suggests that his findings might only apply to French society at that particular historical moment. Lamont’s (1992) study of the North American and French cases found that higher classes did not necessarily limit themselves to high cultural consumption, nor did they use high culture as a basis for exclusion and boundary-making, a finding also reported in a more recent study of cultural patterns in the UK (Bennett et al., 2008).
A plethora of recent empirical studies using national survey data from a variety of different countries has confirmed Bourdieu’s general insight that social position shapes cultural consumption patterns. Stratification-related factors, including income, occupation, and especially education, have been found to influence broad cultural and lifestyle preferences (Gayo-Cal et al., 2006; Le Roux et al., 2008; Sintas and Alvarez, 2002; Sullivan and Katz-Gerro, 2006; Kraaykamp and Nieuwbeerta, 2000), participation in cultural activities (Torche, 2010; Bukodi, 2010; Chan and Goldthorpe, 2005), musical preferences (Bryson, 1996; Peterson and Kern, 1996; Anderson et al., 2010; Coulangeon and Lemel, 2010), and a post-material cultural orientation (Majima and Savage, 2007).
The search for explanatory factors includes a broad range of other sociological variables. Most of the above studies reported significant age effects, which are thought to represent generational or lifecycle differences that shape cultural preferences. Gender effects are also reported in most of the above studies (for exceptions see Le Roux et al., 2008, Sullivan and Katz-Gerro, 2007, and Sintas and Alvarez, 2002). In one of the few studies that looks at religion, Katz-Gerro (2002) report that religiosity significantly increases high-brow preferences in some countries while reducing them in other countries. In Israel, religiosity reduces both high-brow and popular cultural consumption (Katz-Gerro and Shavit, 1998), a study that is particularly relevant to the Turkish case, since it shares a long-standing social division between secular and religious segments of the population.
In general these studies support Lamont’s claim of less rigid boundaries between consumers of high and popular culture (see also DiMaggio, 1987; Pakulski and Waters, 1996), with a growing body of international studies pointing to the existence of a ‘cultural omnivore’ (Peterson and Kern, 1996; Sintas and Alvarez, 2002; Keller and Vihalemm, 2003; Chan and Goldthorpe, 2005; Torche, 2010; Bukodi, 2010), a category of high status individuals who express an openness toward a larger range of culture products, consuming both high and popular culture, an eclectic taste which may represent a new status marker among high status individuals. Lower status individuals tend not to consume any high culture and are designated as ‘cultural univores’, as their cultural diet is restricted to low or popular forms.
In addition to the shifting of cultural boundaries, research points to what may be a cultural universal in modern societies – a fundamental distinction between a culturally active segment of society (exemplified by the omnivore), whose members express taste distinctions, regularly consume cultural products and participate in cultural activities, and those that are culturally inactive (Gayo-Cal et al., 2006; Bennett et al., 2008; Le Roux et al., 2008; Torche, 2010; Anderson, et al., 2010; Kraaykamp et al., 2010).
A growing body of research has focused on the changing cultural milieu of postsocialist Eastern Europe. Despite the socialist legacy, various measures of stratification are linked to cultural patterns in several countries in that region (Kraaykamp and Nieuwbeerta, 2000). Moreover, this is a region, like Turkey, that has recently embraced neoliberal globalization and the resulting influx of Western material and cultural products, a change that is transforming consumption and lifestyle patterns (Kennedy, 2002; Lankauskas, 2002; Keller and Vihalemm, 2003, 2005; Keller, 2005; Eglitis, 2010). This research highlights the role that Western culture is playing in the construction of new identities and lifestyles in those countries, with similar effects – the fragmentation of old cultural hierarchies, a proliferation of new ways of constructing a ‘modern’ subject, and increasing inequalities that structure both access to cultural resources (especially consumer goods) and cultural preferences. Disengagement, in this cultural context, is a strategy used by some groups to construct a more ‘authentic’ identity outside of the Western consumerist frame. Below we briefly discuss the Turkish context, which we believe shares many similarities with that of Eastern Europe.
The Changing Cultural Landscape of Turkey
A glance at Turkey’s history highlights a number of unique features that have shaped the cultural field in that country. While its imperial past left a rich cultural legacy, the modern republic, established in 1923, sought to suppress that legacy, instead imposing a set of reforms designed to Westernize the society, including all cultural spheres, where the state encouraged the adoption of Western tastes and styles in the arts, architecture, clothing, and lifestyle and leisure activities (Göçek, 1996; Bozdoğan and Kasaba, 1997). ‘High culture’ in the new republic’s cultural hierarchy meant Western high culture. As such, beginning in the early Republican period, a strong homology between privileged social position and Western taste and lifestyle preferences was established, preferences that required both economic and cultural capital to realize (Ergin, 2005). The state’s culture project had much less influence on non-elites, particularly in the rural and eastern parts of the country (Keyder, 2004; Brockett, 1998).
The taste for a Western, secularized culture and lifestyle in Turkey has been reinforced by recent economic and cultural globalization. Similar to the transition to a neoliberal market-based society in Eastern Europe, after the economic liberalization of the 1980s, with the attending flood of western products into the country, lifestyles and consumption practices, particularly among its middle class, increasingly appeared as a jarring pastiche of the global and local, often satirized in cartoons of the day (Öncü, 1999). More recently, the society has seen the rise of a highly educated middle class linked to the most dynamic and globalized sectors of the urban service economy. This group is plugged into global culture, of which they are sophisticated consumers. Indeed, the 1990s witnessed the rise of a ‘consumption ideal’ among the new middle class, and conspicuous consumption increasingly marked class and status boundaries (Emrence, 2008). Many seek to emulate their Western counterparts, with consumption patterns and lifestyles that are similar to western elites (Ayata, 2002; Bartu and Kolluoğlu, 2008; Üstüner and Holt, 2009).
Yet this new middle class is not culturally homogeneous. Similar to Bourdieu’s (1984) finding of cultural distinctions among class fractions in France, other segments of the newly affluent middle class, particularly those who have less cultural capital from education, seem to reject Western and global cultural tastes, instead taking their cues from the cultural practices of a less-westernized national social and cultural elite. Despite their common class situation and residential proximity to one another, a cultural divide between the new middle class segments exists, with invidious comparisons on both sides. The ‘modern’ globalist middle class snobbishly derides the vulgar aesthetics of the localist middle class, while the latter criticizes the slavishly imitative style of the Westernized middle class (Üstüner and Holt, 2009). As such, an important cultural boundary in Turkish society appears to be one’s stance toward non-local culture.
Recent and rapid social changes in Turkey are further transforming its cultural field, setting the stage for what appears to be the continuing erosion and fragmentation of the old cultural hierarchies of the Republican era, as new cultural modes compete with one another (Öncü, 1999). Secular elites are now being challenged, politically by the lengthy reign of the ruling conservative, Islamic-inspired, Justice and Development Party (JDP), and economically and culturally by a newly assertive Islamic middle class and the pious masses that are the JDP’s base (Gümüşçü and Sert, 2009; Demir et al., 2004). The cultural tastes and lifestyles of the increasingly consumerist Islamic middle class represent a new hybrid melding of the ‘modern’ and ‘traditional’ that are deemed to be consistent with Islamic piety (White, 1999; Navaro-Yashin, 2002). Class and status group competition is reflected in heated debates around divisive cultural issues, such as alcohol consumption, the headscarf ban, ‘alternative’ lifestyles, and secularism and the role of Islam in Turkish society – issues that are on the frontlines of Turkey’s growing culture war (Saktanber, 2002; Mardin, 2006; Toprak, 2009).
Based on the above, we believe that many of the central concerns that emerged from the recent studies of cultural boundaries are relevant to the study of the cultural field of Turkey, including the existence of cultural affinities linked to social position, the erosion and/or fragmentation of established cultural hierarchies, greater individualization of cultural identities, and the development of an omnivorous taste pattern. Similar to the aforementioned Eastern European trend, the case of Turkey also alerts us to the issue of the impact of Western culture outside of the Western context, which is fueling the emergence of multiple and competing cultural hierarchies and new forms of cultural hybridization that conjoin the local and global in a process of ‘glocalization’ (Robertson, 1995; Öncü, 1999). The cultural field, with its local and global hierarchies of high and popular culture, suggests a degree of complexity that will help shed light on how concepts like high and popular culture and omnivorousness apply to countries outside of the developed, Western world. In addition, Turkey has one of the highest levels of poverty and economic inequality of any OECD country (OECD, 2011) and, as such, we expect it to have a large number of people in the culturally disengaged category.
Methods
The data come from a project entitled ‘The Construction of Cultural Boundaries: Relations between Cultural, Socio-Economic and Moral Status Symbols in Turkey’, one of the first systematically to study the cultural field in Turkey. The study was conducted in two stages over the course of 18 months, beginning in August 2009. The first was a qualitative component involving in-depth interviews of 49 people of various age, gender, and socio-economic characteristics from different cities around the country. The second stage of the research was a quantitative one involving a national survey of 1893 adults that was fielded in January 2011. The survey sample is based on a stratified random sampling of the 2009 Turkish national electoral rolls, the most recent and reliable address listing available at the time. The list was stratified by region and urban/rural location using the Turkish Statistical Institute’s 12 economic and social development regions and their urban/rural designation, such that the resulting sample is proportional to urban and rural population size in each region and for the country as a whole. Seventy-six percent of the sample is urban and 24 percent is rural. Face-to-face interviews were conducted at the home of respondents. The main purpose of the national survey was to collect nationally representative data to help in identifying cultural and moral boundaries in Turkey.
The analysis uses a large number of cultural variables that our in-depth interview material and knowledge of Turkish society suggest should differentiate cultural groups in Turkey. We include items related to local cultural forms that are more specific to Turkish society, as well as forms that are more non-local (i.e. mostly Western). We also made an effort to include a range of taste categories that represent ‘high culture’ (e.g. classical music, independent films, and world literature), as well as ‘popular culture’ (e.g. TV sports programs, Turkish folk music, and kebab restaurants) as we understand them in the Turkish context. There are a total of 128 modalities (i.e. variable categories) that represent a wide range of subfields of cultural taste and participation/activities. These include 99 categories of taste in film, television, music, literature, and cuisine. The taste variables were originally coded as Likert scales (i.e. ‘strongly like’ to ‘strongly dislike’). Since the analytic technique we use requires categorical variables, we recoded them to ‘like’, ‘indifferent/unaware of’, and ‘dislike’. We also include 29 categories of participation and cultural activities, including the celebration of various holidays, frequency of book reading, and going to the cinema, artistic performances, seminars, and shopping malls, and the frequency of internet use and activity on social networking sites. Depending on the distribution, the frequency variables are recoded into two to five categories, with zero being ‘never participates/does’ and higher numbers indicating greater frequency. Since categories with few cases can be overly influential, we follow Le Roux and Rouanet’s (2010) recommendation and recode categories with fewer than 5 percent of the cases to their closest category, when appropriate; otherwise, they were set to missing. The resulting sample size is 1247. A list of all taste and participation modalities can be found in Appendix A.
Given that a central issue of this paper is how cultural patterns are related to social stratification, we include several variables that measure different aspects of an individual’s social location that have been identified in the literature on Turkey and elsewhere, discussed above, as important factors shaping cultural patterns. They are education, income, gender and age. Since the analytical technique we use assumes that variables are measured at the nominal level, income and age have been grouped (see Appendix B for measurement details).
In addition, we believe that Turkish cultural boundaries will be strongly influenced by the degree to which individuals and groups adhere to a secular or Islamic identity. As such, we include another variable – an index of secular-Islamic values as indicated by attitudes towards the role of religion in public life. It is measured as a count of the number of times a respondent agrees with the following four statements: 1) ‘It would be better for the country if religious values were given more importance’, 2) ‘The sale of alcohol should be banned during the holy month of Ramadan’, 3) ‘Religion classes should be mandatory in public schools’, and 4) ‘In order to live together, a couple should have a religious marriage ceremony’. The variable ranges from 0 (i.e. indicating a secular position on all issues) to 4 (i.e. indicating a religious position on all issues). The alpha for the index is .81.
Multiple Correspondence Analysis
We analyze our data using Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA). Originally pioneered by Bourdieu, MCA is a geometric data analytic technique for examining relationships between categorical variables. The analyses were conducted using Stata’s MCA program, which starts by creating a contingency table of people (in rows) and their binary responses to cultural questions (in columns). The procedure then calculates eigenvalues, which are interpretable as the variance explained by each axis or dimension represented in the data. A comparison of eigenvalues is useful for eliminating dimensions that explain little of the variation. MCA also calculates coordinates, for spatially locating cultural preferences in relation to one another, and contributions, which are the amount of variance explained by any given cultural item. It should be noted that the technique is different from the conventional probabilistic modeling used in hypothesis testing, because it is more in the inductive tradition of letting the data speak for itself without imposing a priori models. As such, it is well suited as an exploratory tool for surveying cultural fields, and several recent studies have used the technique (Bennett, 2006; Gayo-Cal et al., 2006; Majima and Savage, 2007; Le Roux et al., 2008; Bennett et al., 2008).
The value of MCA is that it allows us to examine the spatial relationship of cultural preferences, individuals, and social groups. The task of the researcher using MCA is interpretation of the resulting points on a map, particularly the presence of clustering indicating affinities between modalities (in our case, taste and participation items). The technique also allows for locating individuals and social categories in the resulting cultural map, so inferences can be made about the proportion and types of individuals that share cultural affinities.1
The social and demographic characteristics of the sample are presented in Table 1. Particularly note worthy is that educational levels are generally lower in Turkey in comparison to most other OECD countries. Over a third of the adults in the sample (i.e. 36%) have a primary school education and only 10 percent have college or above degrees. Average monthly household income was 1348 Turkish Liras, which was equivalent to 621 euros at the time of the survey. The mean secular-Islamic values index score is 2.85, meaning that the average respondent supported a greater role of religion in public life on nearly three out of the four questions asked.
Figure 1 plots the coordinates of specific taste and participation/activities modalities that significantly contributed (i.e. greater than the average contribution level) to either of the two largest dimensions.2 The spatial proximity of points on the map is interpretable as the degree of similarity between cultural preference items or individuals. Points that are close to one another are more similar, distant ones are dissimilar. As an aid to visualization, individual quadrant maps are included in Appendix C. Dimension 1, located on the horizontal axis, is the most important dimension, based on its greater amount of
Table 1. Sample descriptive statistics (N = 1247).
Demographic Characteristics Percent Mean SD Min Max
Gender male 49.88
female 50.12
Age 36.60 13.97 16 88
Marital Status never married 29.99
married 64.55
lives with partner 0.40
separated 0.40
divorced 1.68
widowed 2.97
Education
less than primary school 5.69
primary school 36.17
secondary school 17.48
high school (all types) 30.63
college/graduate degree 10.02
Household Monthly Income (in TL) 1348.12 933.66 0 7500
Secular-Islamic Values Index 2.85 1.40 0 4
Figure 1. MCA map of cultural tastes and participation.
explained variance of the cultural space (i.e. 64%). We are calling it the ‘engagement’ dimension. The left-hand side of the map suggests cultural engagement in the form of both taste ‘likes’ and, with one exception, no active ‘dislikes’. The upper-left quadrant contains a cluster of cultural likes (denoted ‘_L’) over a wide range of tastes and participation. Here we see more non-local cosmopolitan tastes in musical genres, including those defined as high and popular culture forms in the West (i.e. blues, jazz, classical, electronic, and rap) and in cuisine (i.e. world cuisine, and ‘fine dining’), as well as preferences for ‘high brow’ literary genres (i.e. modern, world, science/history/politics, and art) and TV art shows and independent films. However, this cluster also includes some local and more popular culture preferences for Turkish and romance literature and horror films. Several participation/activities are located in this cluster, including more frequent cinema and ‘brunch’ going, attendance of seminars, concerts, and other fine arts performances, the celebration of events that are not Turkish in origin (e.g. Valentine’s Day), and the use of internet and its social network websites.
It should be noted that virtually none of the modalities that represent more local tastes in film, television, music, etc. contributed to this dimension and, thus, do not differentiate groups. This means that this more cosmopolitan group does not reject local culture. A second observation is that, in addition to a taste for Western popular musical genres, cinema-going, also indentified as a more low-brow popular activity in most Western contexts, is an activity that is spatially near to more high culture tastes in Turkey, suggesting an affinity between the two.
The right side of the map contains most of the ‘neutral’ modalities (denoted ‘_N’). This is a cultural stance of neither liking nor disliking, but rather a lack of familiarity with, or interest in, a particular taste or cultural activity. We interpret this side of the map to represent a pattern of cultural disengagement. This seems to be true of both high and popular literary genres, cuisine types, and most of the non-local music genres. Participation is also low for the disengaged side of the axis, as the modalities of ‘never goes’ to cinema, performances or shopping malls and ‘does not use’ the internet or social networking sites are in that area.
Dimension 2 seems to be linked to differing orientations towards emerging forms of modern, urban, and, to some extent, Western cultural forms, reflected in the clustering of active ‘likes’ and active ‘dislikes’ to those forms. As noted above, the upper-left quadrant contains a preference for Western musical genres, contemporary literature, independent films, and more frequent cinema, seminar, and performing arts attendance, which also contribute to Dimension 2. The upper-right quadrant contains those who neither like nor dislike various literary genres and cuisine types, or simply have no knowledge or direct experience with them to have formed an opinion. The lower half of the model expresses more dislikes toward these modern/urban forms, particularly in literature and cuisine, but also in film genres (i.e. independent, horror, and action films). The cluster is also associated with a dislike of Turkish protest music. We interpret this dimension as differentiating between those who have a taste for the emergent (i.e. modern) cultural forms, in contrast to a preference for more established (i.e. traditional) ones, both of which are defined largely by their differing orientation towards Western cultural forms.
In order better to understand how cultural consumption is related to the two dimensions described above, we summed the contribution of the individual modalities to
Table 2. Percentage contribution to Dimension 1 and 2 variance according to taste and participation domains.
Television 3.83 3.53
Film 3.92 7.31
Music 24.10 15.64
Food/Cuisine 7.16 11.84
Literature 34.62 52.98
Subtotal
Participation Activities
73.65 91.30
Cinema frequency 3.93 1.33
# Books read 2.64 .70
Special days celebrated 3.50 .65
Shopping venue type/mall going frequency 1.98 .29
M useum/art gallery/performing arts attendance 4.68 2.83
Seminar attendance 1.22 .99
Brunch going 1.22 .38
Web/social networking site use 7.20 1.53
Subtotal 26.35 8.70
Total 100.00 100.00
indicate the percent of variance explained by taste domains and participation activities for both of the two main dimensions obtained from the MCA analysis (see Table 2). Doing so helps us to understand what broad areas of taste and participation activities account for cultural difference. In both dimensions, taste preferences account for a large majority of the variation, 74 percent for Dimension 1 and 91 percent for Dimension 2. Of the taste domains, literary tastes contribute the most to both dimensions (34% and 53%), followed by musical tastes (24% and 15%) and, to a lesser extent, cuisine tastes (7% and 12%). The domain of television tastes does not contribute much to cultural distinctions among adults. While domains of participation contribute little to Dimension 2 (i.e. 9%), they account for 26 percent of the variance in Dimension 1, mostly via internet-related and museum/art gallery/performing arts activities.
Figure 2 is a map or ‘cloud’ of individuals in our sample. Since the data are nationally representative of all adults, the distribution of individuals around the cultural space approximates the actual size of cultural clusters nationally. Counting the points on the map, 46 percent of the individuals fall within the ‘engaged’ zone of the map (the left side of the figure), nearly evenly divided into the modern/urban/global culture ‘likers’ (24% in upper-left quadrant) and their detractors (22% in lower-left quadrant). A somewhat larger proportion, 54 percent of all individuals, are found in the ‘disengaged’ zone (the right side of the map), 30 percent of whom are located in the upper-right quadrant of those disinterested in, or lack awareness of, different literature and cuisine tastes, and 24 percent in the lower-right quadrant of those disengaged from emergent cultural forms
Figure 2. MCA map of individuals.
and who do not participate in cultural activities, such as cinema and performance attendance or reading books.
Figure 3 shows the plot of the social and demographic categories in the cultural space, which can also be superimposed over Figure 1. As ‘supplementary’ variables, they have no influence on the distances and contributions of the cultural modalities. The points only represent the mean coordinate of the particular category. The variable categories are connected by lines as a visual aid in following the sequencing of the categories.
For the most part, the categories are ordered along the axis of Dimension 1, meaning that the characteristics are more closely associated with the engagement/disengagement pattern. This map shows that the cluster of engaged cultural consumers who have a taste for contemporary urban and Western culture is closest to the most educated, highest income, youngest and most secular identity points on the map. Conversely, less educated, lower income, older and more religious persons are closer to the engaged rejecters or those ambivalent towards or disinterested in those elements of the cultural field. The point that represents the lowest educational attainment is closest to this latter group. Gender distinctions are not large, but women tend to be somewhat closer to the ‘disengaged’ area of the map than men.
Discussion
This study examines the relationship between social stratification and cultural consumption patterns in Turkey, a developing, non-Western, and predominately Muslim context. Our analysis shows that several of the cultural features highlighted in previous work in
Figure 3. MCA map of social categories.
other contexts are observable in Turkey, including evidence of cultural affinities linked to social position, an omnivorous taste pattern, and a large segment of the population who are relatively disengaged culturally. Yet we also highlight the ways in which the Turkish case differs from previous research, particularly the role that western culture plays in that country’s cultural field.
Based on our analysis, there appear to be three broad clusters in the cultural space of Turkey. One is the ‘engaged cosmopolitans’ who have embraced a more urban and globalized culture, both in taste, particularly in music, literature, and cuisine, but also in participation preferences. They are also active users of new media, including the internet and its social networking websites. This cultural pattern is consistent with reports of a growing cosmopolitanization of tastes among the new globalized middle class of contemporary Turkey (Ayata, 2002; Bartu and Kolluoglu, 2008; Emrence 2008). With its history of Westernizing cultural engineering, it is probably not surprising that a sizable proportion of the adult population exhibits these tastes. However, nearly all of the categories that measure local culture fail to differentiate clusters, suggesting that claims that this cultural group is ‘deterritorialized’ (Üstüner and Holt, 2009) may be exaggerated, as our finding suggest that its members are probably also regular consumers of the local high and popular culture.
Numerically, this taste cluster may fit as many as a quarter of the adult population and is strongly linked to privileged social position, that is, located closest to the highest income and education categories and the most secular identity. In contrast to the British study showing that younger members of the culturally engaged middle class prefer more ‘contemporary’ and popular forms (Bennett et al., 2008), young Turkish adults are also closer to preferences for more ‘established’ forms of the secular culture in literature and the arts. We speculate that this may be related to the combined effect of higher educational attainment among the younger generation and the increased availability of these cultural forms in the contemporary period.
The second cluster of taste – the ‘engaged provincialists’ – takes a more critical stance toward this emerging culture, particularly in a general dislike of its literary forms, but also some cuisine types, preferring more established (i.e. traditional) ones. This cluster may loosely apply to 30 or 40 percent of the population and is closest to older adults of middle income and education, and who are more likely to support an active role for religion in public life. We speculate that the more modest social status of this localist middle class means they are sufficiently exposed to broader cultural phenomena to have formed an opinion, albeit sometimes negative, of this emerging cultural diversity, a pattern that may be more prevalent among the new Islamic middle class.
The third cluster is a group that is more culturally disengaged, expressing neutrality towards, disinterest in, or lack of knowledge of a broad array of literary, cuisine and musical taste genres. Cultural participation is also low for this cluster, a group more likely to say they never go to the cinema, performances or shopping malls, and do not use the internet or social networking sites. As much as half of the adult population, mostly those with the least income and education, but also older people and women, are associated with this cultural milieu.
The existence of an engagement/disengagement cultural dimension, widely reported in other studies discussed above, has been linked to unequal distribution of material and cultural resources, and lifecycle and generational differences that affect openness to new cultural forms and opportunities to participate. Our results are consistent with those explanations. However, given the higher levels of poverty and inequality in Turkey, material disadvantages that limit access to cultural resources are probably more of a factor in disengagement there. Moreover, mechanisms of social exclusion prevent large segments of the population from acquiring the cultural capital (especially in the form of education and English language proficiency) necessary to critically engage and participate in the dynamic cosmopolitanism of the Turkish cultural field, particularly as culture is increasingly commodified. Given Turkey’s recent embrace of neoliberalism and the growth of social and spatial inequalities it has spawned (Ayata, 2002; Bartu and Kolluoglu, 2008; Emrence, 2008), disengagement is likely to be a persistent feature of the country’s cultural landscape.
Our results are broadly consistent with the empirical research linking social position and cultural consumption. Cultural differences along both dimensions – level of engagement and orientation towards Western culture – appear to be strongly associated with differences in education, income, and age, and, to a lesser extent, gender. However, in Turkey, cultural boundaries are also shaped by religion-not surprisingly, given the heated public debates around issues of secularism and Islam in Turkey. That the more religious are more disengaged suggests that moral judgments rooted in religious beliefs lead large numbers of people to reject modern secular culture, particularly in its Western forms. A similar response has been reported in several post-socialist Eastern European countries, where cultural disengagement there takes the form of a rejection of the Western consumerist ethos and its associated tastes and activities, which are seen as a threat to real or imagined ‘traditional’ identities (Lankauskas, 2002; Keller and Vihalemm, 2003, 2005; Keller, 2005). As reported here, this is often seen among older generations. In Turkey, a religiously-based, anti-Western consumption ethos has probably been facilitated by the emergence of Islamic consumer culture that targets the particular tastes of the growing Islamic middle class (White, 1999; Navaro-Yashin, 2002).
Our analysis highlights the limits of viewing cultural fields as national in scope and underscores the impact of Western culture outside of the Western context, which appears to be reorganizing cultural hierarchies in Turkey and engendering new forms of cultural hybridization in a melding of local and non-local culture. As we have shown, cultural communities in Turkey are largely differentiated by their preferences for, dislike of, or indifference to, Western culture, distinctions that are frequently deployed in the construction of cultural boundaries in Turkey (Öncü, 1999; Üstüner and Holt, 2009).
In this regard, we note the ‘engaged cosmopolitian’ cluster is similar to the cultural omnivore pattern of high status consumers of a wide range of high and lowbrow products, widely cited in other studies discussed above. However, in the Turkish context, their defining feature may be the preference for Western culture, that is, omnivorousness includes an appreciation of high and popular forms of both local and foreign culture. More research is needed about how this taste pattern is related to cultural boundary-making, but given the social position of this taste cluster and the history of privileging Western culture, omnivorousness may represent a new form of cultural capital for Turkey’s secular elite.
In addition to the more globally-oriented omnivore, we also provide evidence of ‘glocalization’ in how global products are locally consumed. Much of the literature uses the terms ‘high’ and ‘low/popular’ culture as shorthand for a complicated set of tastes and behaviors. However, what constitutes high and low/popular culture in one country may not be the case in another (Katz-Gerro, 2002), an issue that is probably most relevant for developing countries that have been deeply affected by imported Western culture. While this pattern has been observed in forms of popular culture participation, such as cinema-going among high status persons in Chile (Torche, 2010), our results suggest that it is also salient with respect to taste preferences. Western popular musical forms, in particular, tend to be embraced by members of Turkey’s upper strata, suggesting that the indigenization of global culture in that context has not reproduced the original taste hierarchy.
Much as engagement with Western culture is central to the reordering of cultural hierarchies in post-socialist Eastern Europe, the Turkish case highlights the role of Western culture in shaping the cultural field of that country. However, it should not be overstated. The fact that very few local modalities differentiate groups in Turkey suggests that global culture is not displacing what appears to be a robust local culture. Turkish cultural products, whether in music, television, or film, are highly popular with local and, increasingly, global audiences (Bugdayci, 2011). While a taste for Western culture may still be an important status marker in the cultural hierarchy of Turkey’s secular elite, it is not to the exclusion of the local.
Funding
The project was funded by a grant from TÜBİTAK (#109K062). Invaluable research assistance came from graduate students in the Comparative Studies in History and Society program: Güliz Akkaymak, Ezgi Canpolat, Duygu Kaşdoğan, Ayşegül Kayagil, Nazlı Özkan, and Ülker Sözen. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the American Sociological Association’s annual meeting on 17 August 2013.
Notes
1. For those interested in a non-technical introduction to MCA, see Le Roux and Rouanet (2010). For a practical application of the method for studying national cultural patterns that closely parallels the present study, see Gayo-Cal, Savage, and Warde (2006).
2. Based on the eigenvalues (not shown here), we choose a two-dimension solution. The variance explained by the third dimension is small enough to be of little interest (i.e. 3.1%).
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Author biographies
Bruce Rankin is Associate Professor of Sociology at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. His recent research deals with cultural boundary-making processes, educational inequality, and the social consequences of economic hardship.
Murat Ergin is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. His current research interests include culture, nationalism, identity, race, popular culture, and death.
Fatoş Gökşen is Associate Professor of Sociology, Director of the Social Policy Research Center, and the Associate Dean of the College of Social Sciences and Humanities at Koç University in Istanbul, Turkey. Her research interests are educational inequalities, gender, environment, and social policy.
Appendix A. MCA variables and modalities.
Variables Modalitiesa Modality Labels
Hours of TV watching (weekday + weekend) 0-4, 5-7, 8+ hrs TVtime_1-3
Likes news programs L, D TVnews_L, D
Likes documentaries L, D TVdoc_L, D
Likes sports programs L, D TVspor_L, D
Likes arts programs L, N, D TVart_L, N, D
Likes TV magazine shows L, D TVmag_L, D
Likes TV series L, D TVser_L, D
Likes religious-themed TV programs L, D TVrel_L, D
Likes prime-time TV programs for women L, D TVwom_L, D
Frequently went to the cinema last year 0-1, 2-3, 4 times Cin_0-2
Likes action/adventure films L, N, D Fact_L, N, D
Likes independent and artistic films L, N, D Find_L, N, D
Likes horror/thriller films L, D Fhor_L, D
Likes romance films L, D From_L, D
Likes Turkish cinema of the 1960s and 1970s L, D Ftk_L, D
Likes Turkish classical music L, D Mtclas_L, D
Likes Turkish folk music L, D Mfolk_L, D
Likes classical music L, N, D Mclas_L, N, D
Likes blues L, N, D Mblue_L, N, D
Likes jazz L, N, D Mjazz_L, N, D
Likes arabesk L, N, D Marab_L, N, D
Likes rap and hip hop L, N, D Mrap_L, N, D
Likes electronic dance/techno/ lounge music L, N, D Meldanc_L, N, D
Likes Kurdish music L, N, D Mkurd_L, N, D
Likes Turkish pop music L, D Mtpop_L, D
Likes protest music L, D Mprot_L, D
Likes kebab restaurants L, D Rkeb_L, D
Likes world cuisine restaurants L, N, D Rworld_L, N, D
Likes fish restaurants (serving alcohol) L, N, D Rfish_L, N, D
Likes street food peddlers L, N, D Rstrt_L, N, D
Likes ‘fine dining’ restaurants L, N, D Rfine_L, N, D
Place for food and grocery shopping G, M, S gro, mkt, sup
Number of books read last year 0, 1-2, 3-5, 6-9, 10+ Book_0-4
Likes classical world literature L, N, D Lclass_L, N, D
Likes modern world literature L, N, D Lmod_L, N, D
Likes romances L, N, D Lrom_L, N, D
Likes Turkish literature L, N, D Ltlit_L, N, D
Likes science/history/politics L, N, D Lschspl_L, N, D
Likes art books L, N, D Lart_L, N, D
Likes religious books L, N, D Lrel_L, N, D
Celebrates Valentine’s Day Y, N CelVD_Y, N
Celebrates national holidays Y, N CelNat_Y, N
Celebrates New Year’s Day Y, N CelNY_Y, N
Appendix A. (Continued)
Variables Modalitiesa Modality Labels
Frequency attends concerts, plays, dance performances 0, 1+ Pperf_0-1
Frequency goes to museums and art galleries 0, 1+ Pmusart_0-1
Frequency goes to brunch 0, 1+ Pbrun_0-1
Frequency attends panels and seminars 0, 1+ Psem_0-1
Frequency goes shopping malls Never, occasionally, frequently Pmall_0- 2
Ever used the Web before Y, N Web_Y, N
Visits social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter Y, N Snet_Y, N
aL=likes, N=neutral or not aware of, D=dislikes, Y=yes, N=no, G=green grocer, M=outdoor market, S=supermarket.
Appendix B. MCA supplementary variables and modalities.
Variables Modalities Modality Names
Gender male, female Male, Female
Education less than primary, primary, secondary, high school, college or above completed educ_1-5
Income 0-699, 700-999, 1000-1499, 1500-1999, 2000-
2999, 3000 & above (in Turkish Liras) inc_1-6
Age 16-24, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55 & above agegrp_1-5
Secular-Religious Values Count of agreements on four questions related to strengthening the role of religion and religious values in public life secrel_0-4
Appendix C. Quadrant maps.
(Appendix C. Continued)
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