Remaking Politics, Markets and Citizens in Turkey

Remaking Politics, Markets, and Citizens in Turkey critically analyses the travel of neoliberal ideas, policies, experts and institutions from the West to Turkey. Through an ethnographic investigation of the newly established tobacco market, Ebru Kayaalp considers how they are being adopted and transformed in their new settings. The February 2001 crisis, the most severe economic downturn in the history of Turkey, generated an emergency situation in which a series of sweeping neoliberal policies were implemented to prop up the collapsed economy. To receive the necessary loans from the international financial institutions, the Turkish government hastily enacted a number of neoliberal laws, including the notorious tobacco law. Remaking Politics, Markets, and Citizens in Turkey not only explores the repercussions of the new tobacco law, such as the establishment of a new regulatory institution, the emergence of contract farming and the privatization of the tobacco monopoly, thereby making a liberalized market, but also the smoking ban governing the bodies and spaces of Muslim citizens. Remaking Politics, Markets, and Citizens in Turkey provides an innovative contribution to Middle Eastern studies, filling the gap for anthropological research in Muslim countries on local economic relations and their connections with the global economy.

Review: A rare example of ethnographic research in which the reader will find everything in one place. * Journal of Economic Sociology *

A must-read for students of modern Turkey focusing on political economy, economic anthropology, and science and technology studies. * New Perspectives on Turkey *

From the more than two decades of debates, theories, and examples of what it is to produce ethnographic studies of neoliberal political economies, Kayaalp's study of the shifting assemblages around the making of tobacco markets in contemporary Turkey, is the one I would (and will) select to teach the state of anthropology's art in this major collective contemporary research project of the discipline. With elegance, she encompasses the global phenomenon as a closely observed dynamic form, an affair of experts with profound effects on the commitments of states, while keeping 'local knowledge' a little offside, but still in a place of honor. -- George E. Marcus, University of California-Irvine, USA

Ebru Kayaalp's book is a wonderful blend of classic and contemporary ethnography that charts the complicated recent history of Turkey's economy through the lens of a single commodity: tobacco. By doing what anthropologists do best, she paints a portrait of Turkey and its economy today. She shows us how markets are made and unmade, and how they transform politics and remake citizenship in the process. Markets, like smoke, sometimes seem impossible to grasp, but with a book like this, a reader can explore in detail the complex range of institutions, laws, regulations, plants, criminals, bureaucrats, doctors and cigarettes making up the markets in smoke. It is a significant achievement and an engaging read. * Christopher Kelty, Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, UCLA, USA *