
The intimate politics of secularism and the headscarf: the mall, the neighborhood, and the public square in Istanbul
The headscarf continues to be a highly charged political issue in Turkey where it is often understood through the prism of the opposition between so-called Islamists versus secularists. My work brings together feminist scholarship on the politics of everyday space and recent rethinking
of the categories of secularism and religion. I begin by situating this politicized debate in the everyday material contexts of the public square, the street, and the mall. By introducing popular culture (notably the film Büşra) and my own fieldwork on the veil, I argue
that the headscarf represents the intersection of politics of place and individual agency in a way that renders ideological debates contingent on everyday practices. Reducing the headscarf to a sign of Islamism fails to take into account the ever-shifting meanings of this object across time
and space. The differences within and between the everyday urban sites I examine reveal much more complex, often contradictory, and discontinuous geographies of secularism and Islam. This analysis reveals a multiplicity that belies attempts to delineate clearly bounded spaces, subjects, and
ideologies, one that is intimate and political.
Keywords: Islam; cotidiano; everyday; feminist geopolitics; geopolítica feminista; headscarf; pañuelo; secularism; secularismo
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: Department of Geography,University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel HillNC27599-3220, USA
Publication date: February 1, 2012
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