Bruce H. Rankin 4th Annual Memorial Lecture

Ayşe Öncü, Emeritus Professor of Sociology

March 18, 13:00-14:30

Founders Hall (Kurucular Salonu), Koç University

(Zoom Meeting: https://kocun.zoom.us/j/99561162653, Passcode: 864872)

Why have scandals become so integral to politics over the past ten years? How do we begin to understand the ubiquity of scandals in recent Turkish politics? Scandal has been around for centuries. But in the present moment, the meanings and consequences of what constitutes a ‘true’ scandal seems to have shifted.  Scandalous allegations, it seems, no longer stop politicians/public figures in their tracks. Are there any ‘real’ consequences to scandal anymore? And if not, why do scandals continue to produce and absorb so much public commentary? Using the notion of scandal as a lens, this talk will address some puzzles and questions regarding populist mobilization in contemporary politics and offer a brief overview of theoretical approaches to scandal in sociology. It will dwell on the dynamics of scandals by highlighting variations in duration, heterogeneity of audiences and publics involved, as well as diversity of public narratives and scenarios they bring into circulation. There are numerous accounts of ‘iconic’ scandals in the existing literature. In this talk, illustrations will be drawn from recent wave of scandals in Turkish politics. The discussion will center on an apparent paradox: the double dynamic of immanent change and total stasis in the scandal saturated political milieu of present-day Turkey. 

Ayşe Öncü is an emeritus professor of sociology whose institutional affiliations have included Middle East Technical University; Boğaziçi University; and Sabancı University at various stages of her academic career. She has written extensively about globalizing cities and city cultures, with particular emphasis on Istanbul.  Her enduring intellectual concern has been with questions of how larger power inequalities are mapped onto everyday life of cities through ‘normalization’.   Her research on changing popular cultures of İstanbul ranges from various genres of graphic humor; analyses of talk shows on television; popular television series, all the way to commercialization of history in urban theme parks. 

Bruce H. Rankin Annual Memorial Lecture Series is dedicated to the memory of the late sociologist Bruce Howard Rankin, who spent 15 years at Koç University as an educator and researcher. The lectures honor Prof. Rankin’s scholarship in stratification research and his life filled with decency and integrity.