Researcher:
Olcay, Özlem Altan

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Özlem Altan

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Olcay

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Olcay, Özlem Altan

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Researcher Of Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.89639e82-c7a2-4412-b101-5379d6f9a6e3

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 19
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    The long run and the short run: temporalities of gender and development
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd) N/A; Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 104197
    This article examines the multiple temporalities of gender and development work through the experiences of gender experts in international institutions of governance. It delineates the immediate encounters between different actors involved in negotiating international conventions and the short-term accountabilities built into development projects and humanitarian assistance. It then maps them onto narratives of the future to show how they produce the appearance of a linear connection between the present and the future, and generate hopes for a long-run future while blurring the fact that the latter never seems to arrive. What holds this multiplicity together is a politics of hope and waiting, which reveals and sustains the power dynamics in these organizations and give clues about the ambivalent relationship between gender and development planning, and large-scale progress toward gender equality.
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    Market embedded transnationalism: citizenship practices of Turkish elites
    (Springer, 2014) Paker, Evren Balta; Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 104197
    This paper aims to explore one practice of citizenship spreading among privileged groups in Turkey. Making use of the tradition of birthright citizenship, increasing numbers of couples choose to give birth to their children in the United States. This is a transnational process, whereby “natural” citizens of one country use various sources of capital at their disposal to opt to give their children citizenship in another, more industrialized one. This case challenges existing conceptualizations of transnational citizenship, which focus on the palliative effect it might have for vulnerable populations within nation-states, as well as immigrants. We conceptualize the case of privileged minorities, who are able to mobilize resources to acquire a second citizenship for their children, as market embedded transnationalism. This citizenship emerges as a result of calculations about future expectations of benefits, and is obtained as a result of market mechanisms. In this case, the meanings of transnational citizenship can become part of market performances and, therefore, contribute to existing inequalities in novel ways.
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    Claiming local distinction: development discourses in the Middle East and their agents
    (İletişim Yayınları, 2013) Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 104197
    This article analyzes the discourses of particular elite groups in Beirut and Cairoon state politics and the cultures of their countries and the role these play in theirself-representations. It draws attention to the parallels between such themes andpost-1990s development discourses. The meanings the groups attribute to termssuch as knowledge, culture and politics reproduce mainstream development defi- nitions in a simplified manner. In this shift the knowledge production of devel- opment discourses becomes occluded as intellectual labor, but it also starts performing other roles: uses by these social groups contribute to establishing theirown credibility and social distinction. As long as underdevelopment is attributedto public policymaking and societies lacking certain capacities, those who can ar- gue to have what the state and the public lack can make implicit claims to socialdistinction. In other words, the actors who articulate this particular logic with easedue to their educational backgrounds, class positions and access to internationalnetworks, can utilize them to establish their agency and hierarchical positions inthe local context. / Öz:Bu makale, Beyrut ve Kahirenin belli bir elit grubunun ülkelerindeki devlet siyasetine ve içinde yaşadıkları toplumun genel kültürel karakterine dair söylemlerini ve bu söylemlerin kendi toplumsal konumlarını tasvirlerinde oynadığı rolü inceleyecektir. Elitlerin bu temaları dile getiriş biçimleriyle 1990 sonrası ana akım kalkınma söylemleri arasındaki ortaklıklara dikkat çekilmeye çalışılacaktır. Bu toplumsalgrubun mensupları bilgi, kültür ve siyaset gibi terimlere yükledikleri anlamlarla, anaakım kalkınma söylemlerini basitleştirerek yeniden üretmekte ve doğrudan gönder- me yapmaksızın, kendi kimliklerini bu söylemler aracılığıyla tanımlamaktadırlar. Buörtüşmelerde de, kalkınma söylemlerinin daha az dikkat çeken bir kullanım alanı belirginleşmektedir. Azgelişmişlik sorunlarının kaynağı resmî karar alıcı kurumlar ya dabelli yeterliliklerden yoksun toplumlar olarak algılandığı ölçüde, diğerlerinin yoksunolduğu niteliklere sahip olma iddiasını taşıyanlar için örtük bir üstün olma durumuortaya çıkar. Böylece, eğitim altyapıları, sınıf konumları ve uluslararası ağlara ve dillere erişimleri sayesinde, kalkınma söylemlerinin dilini doğallıkla konuşabilen toplumsal gruplar faillik kazanır ve kendilerine ayrı bir kimlik tesis ederler.
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    Making citizens: public rituals and personal journeys to citizenship
    (Taylor & Francis, 2016) Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 104197
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    Expertise at the intersection of technicality and ambiguity: international governance of gender and development
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2022) Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 104197
    This paper studies processes of expert authorisation in international institutions of governance. Based on interviews with gender experts, it focuses on discourses of women's empowerment to reveal two strategies that experts deploy: the production of technical frames and indicators for capturing empowerment while also generating ambiguity about its meaning. I argue that technicalisation and mystification are expert strategies used to navigate organisational priorities and diverse political convictions. I propose that we need to analyse expert knowledge production not just as the cause of depoliticisation of policy problems, but also as part of other institutional processes within which expertise has to be authorised. The ongoing nature of such contestations and negotiations bears on who is acknowledged as an expert and the extent of their authority. The problem is not always expert authority but rather its dependence on political processes devised by actors who retain power by remaining behind the scenes.
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    Born in the USA: citizenship acquisition and transnational mothering in Turkey
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor & Francis Ltd, 2017) Balta, Evren; Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 104197
    This article explores the practice of giving birth in the U.S. for the purpose of obtaining U.S. citizenship for the newborn children, among upper and upper-middle class mothers who otherwise are permanently located in Turkey. Focusing on their motivations, anxieties and practices, we situate our analysis with respect to discussions of intensive mothering, transnational motherhood and multi-layered meanings of citizenship. We suggest that the motivations women have for traveling to and staying in the U.S. in the later stages of their pregnancy reveal a new terrain of intensive mothering, tied to locally specific perceptions of future unpredictability and restrictions on individual choice. This particular discourse of intensive mothering involves the promotion of individualistic-decision-making and individualized efforts to control macro-processes, and reveals how citizenship acquisition for the children reproduces and disguises inequalities at the transnational level. Yet, this is also an intensely emotional process, not only indicative of the pressures on mothers, but also women's multilayered conflicts of belonging and identity across spaces and scales of citizenship.
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    The entrepreneurial woman in development programs: thinking through class differences
    (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2016) N/A; Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; N/A; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; N/A; 104197
    This article explores development programs that focus on women's entrepreneurship with the aim to promote women's empowerment and gender equality, on the one hand, and household poverty reduction and economic growth, on the other. Utilizing a case study from Turkey, it studies the class-based contradictions inherent in the idea of the "entrepreneurial woman." The first contradiction lies between the imaginary of the "entrepreneurial woman," which guides the way in which the programs are devised, and the actual women targeted. This plays out in the difference between the actual resources women can deploy for their economic activities and what is expected of them. A second class tension involves the liminal position of the local NGO officers between the donors and the beneficiaries. Their efforts to sustain their distinction from the latter make the logic of the programs appear to work. This article proposes that these tensions offer insights into the problems concerning the rationalities of development programs, as well as the everyday mechanisms that enable their continued existence.
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    We are family: women's labor mobilization and gender norms in Turkey
    (Pergamon-Elsevier Science Ltd, 2019) N/A; N/A; Department of International Relations; Kılınçarslan, Pelin; Olcay, Özlem Altan; PhD Student; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; N/A; 104197
    This paper studies factory regimes and women workers' self-identifications in two textile factories in Turkey. Based on interviews with women workers, managers, and local union leaders, it traces the circulation of metaphors of family inside the plants. We explore three interrelated uses of the family metaphor: as a boundary between insiders and outsiders; as an extension of household care relations; and as an equivocal container of grievances. We show these metaphors stem from women's own experiences at the intersections of gender, kinship, ethnicity and community ties, as well as the relative ability of the management to control discursive processes. We argue that it is important to pay attention to these everyday processes through which family gains multiple meanings because these become conduits of gender norms, opening up or closing off complex possibilities for worker resistance and/or compliance.
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    Strategic citizens of America: transnational inequalities and transformation of citizenship
    (Taylor & Francis Inc, 2016) Balta, Evren; Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 104197
    This article analyses the process whereby 'natural' citizens of one country mobilize their resources so that their children receive by birthright, the citizenship of a rich liberal democracy. Utilizing the case of Turkish upper classes, who give birth in the USA in order to benefit from the jus soli principle, we trace the emergence of new inequalities at the intersection of multiple citizenship regimes. We show that, by mobilizing resources in markets of health care, travel, and real estate, those with means can acquire US citizenship for their children in expectation of future benefits. Because they are able to access 'valuable' citizenships, these actors can strategically combine privileges within nation states with inequalities between citizenship regimes at the global level for the children. Their differential access to citizenship enhances the gate-keeping functions of citizenship. Based on these observations, we draw an analogy between citizenship and property regimes, understood broadly.
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    Gendered projects of national identity formation: the case of Turkey
    (Routledge Journals, Taylor and Francis Ltd, 2009) Department of International Relations; Olcay, Özlem Altan; Faculty Member; Department of International Relations; College of Administrative Sciences and Economics; 104197
    The consolidation of the Turkish Republic in 1923 took place in opposition to multiple 'others' - that is, multiple ideologies with alternative models of modernity and state formation. an important aspect of the resulting negotiations was their gendered nature. This article explores the multiplicity of subject-positions made available to women using the nationalist literary production of the first half of the twentieth century. By linking literary production with the official discourse, it argues that blurring the distinction between public and private discourses can better capture the gendered character of the nationalist discourse. the analysis details the common denominators between articulations about women's bodies and familial ties, and the building of a nationalist discourse. in these works, typologies of mothers, fathers, daughters, step and adopted ones, and those female figures seen as threats to these families tallied with the ongoing attempts to popularise a particular imagining of the nation. the desired unity of the republic, figuring in these roles, seemed to depend on controlling, taming and erasing a variety of designated identities and ideologies.