Gizem Zencirci, The Muslim Social: Neoliberalism, Charity, and Poverty in Turkey (Syracuse University Press, 2024).

Jadaliyya (J): What made you write this book?

Gizem Zencirci (GZ): Like most first books, this book grew out of my dissertation. Initially, I was drawn to the proliferation of charitable advertisements, campaigns, and slogans in the Turkish public sphere. The rise of organized, professional forms of charity—popular among both Islamic and secularist groups—sought to cultivate solidarity between distant strangers and were thus fundamentally different from earlier forms of charitable giving that occurred informally among family members and neighborhoods. At the same time, I was puzzled with the conflation of private charity and public welfare—a major political strategy of the AKP government and a key aspect of neoliberalism. Thus, one initial impetus for the book was my desire to understand the transformation of the social fabric in Turkey. 

In addition, my book’s analytical focus on the assemblages between Islamic values and neoliberal elements reflects my attempt to rethink some of the assumptions between capitalism and religion. The literature on this topic tends to posit Muslims either as outsiders or victims of neoliberal capitalism. In contrast, I wanted to present a nuanced account of the connections between Islamic concerns about care, community, and charity and neoliberal elements such as privatization, marketization, and individualization. The result is a political anthropology of poverty governance in a Muslim-majority context.

J: What particular topics, issues, and literatures does the book address?

GZ: The book seeks to understand the emergence of a novel governmental apparatus which treats social problems primarily as matters of technical management and emotional well-being, a concept I term the “Muslim Social.” It does this by examining the discursive claims and political implications of four Islamic social projects that are prevalent in Turkey: civilizational revival, populist reform, humanitarian responsibility, and spiritual sanctuary. Each one of these Islamic social projects articulates the relationship between Islam and capitalism in a distinctive but interrelated manner. In each chapter, I trace the production of each project by analyzing the reinterpretation of Islamic charitable traditions, institutions, and practices, and analyze the political implications of these novel discourses in domains such as welfare provision, civil society, humanitarian aid, and volunteer work. I argue that these multi-faceted efforts point to the advent of the Muslim Social.

The book brings together literatures on neoliberal governmentality, social welfare regimes, and Islamic charity in an innovative way. It also borrows from several different disciplines such as anthropology, cultural studies, and political science. This eclectic approach is also reflected in the book’s main analytical and theoretical framework of assemblages: a way of bringing together aspects of social and political life that are not commonly studied together. 

J: How does this book connect to and/or depart from your previous work?

GZ: This book brings together my interest in Islamic politics, the cultural economy of neoliberalism, and the politicization of Ottoman-Islamic heritage in Turkey. Like previous articles that I have published on these topics, The Muslim Social emphasizes the dynamic nature of these encounters, thereby refraining from presenting a monolithic account of Islamic neoliberalism. 

J: Who do you hope will read this book, and what sort of impact would you like it to have?

GZ: I imagine this book would be enjoyed by those interested in the everyday politics of neoliberalism. It demonstrates how neoliberalism works by incorporating languages of care and community, but also shows that the “social” cannot be entirely reduced to the market. I believe that examining this productive tension between communitarian ethics and market logics is essential for understanding the contemporary moment. 

At the same time, I hope that this book has an impact on scholarship about Islamist social services, which often uses an instrumentalist or institutionalist approach that focuses either on patron-client relationships, mechanisms for vote-buying, or the transformation of the state’s welfare capacity. By contrast, The Muslim Social approaches this issue by privileging a cultural lens that emphasizes the dynamic and fluid power of meaning-making practices. 

More broadly, for scholars of Islam, I think the book presents several themes. First, it highlights the power of interpretation and the importance of a situated analysis, instead of relying on sweeping generalizations about Islamic teachings on polity, economy, justice, or poverty. Second, the book also demonstrates the plurality—and indeterminacy—of Islamic politics in Turkey, thereby moving beyond the conventional frameworks of democracy versus authoritarianism that are often deployed to understand the politics of the Middle East.  

Finally, I hope that the book will speak to those interested in questions of heritage. On the one hand, The Muslim Social illustrates the creative ways in which religious, imperial, and cultural heritage can be used and abused by those in positions of political authority. On the other hand, it also shows that the everyday life of heritage politics often transcends the intentions of those who are in power. For this reason, I think that the book offers one model for heritage scholars interested in exploring the Janus-faced dimensions of heritage politics. 

J: What other projects are you working on now?

GZ: I am working on a new project partially funded by the InHerit-Heritage in Transformation Centre for Advanced Study at Humboldt University, Berlin. This project examines the new heritage politics in Turkey which portray Ottoman ahi (craft guilds) institutions as models for Islamic capitalism. It grew out of my involvement in The Islamic Intellectual Field and Political Theorizing in Turkey” research group. More broadly, I am trying to understand the ways in which the relationship between Islam and the economy have been theorized by Muslim intellectuals in Turkey, and I plan to map the different articulations of business ethics, equality, justice, and labor relations that animate these discussions. Although the conceptualization of these issues varies across time and depends on each intellectual’s perspective, there is also a long-term continuity in the ways in which these intellectuals seek to conceptualize “Islamic economy” from a decolonial perspective. My next book will hopefully examine these productive—and underexamined—intellectual encounters between Islam, decoloniality, and heritage politics. 

J: How do you see the future of the Muslim Social in Turkey? 

GZ: While the recent municipal elections (March 2024) show that the AKP may be losing its authoritarian grip, I think that the governmental technologies introduced during the advent of the Muslim Social will persevere. By now, these governmental technologies—which approach social problems as matters of technical management and emotional well-being—are widely accepted by community groups, NGOs, and numerous political parties as examples of good governance. Having said that, the emphasis on the Islamic nature of social assistance may diminish even if the institutions, practices, and technologies remain the same. Thus, I would say that the Muslim Social is here to stay, regardless of the political shifts the future of Turkey may hold. 

Excerpt from the book (from the Introduction, pp. 1-8) 

When I met Ibrahim in 2010, he was the forty-five-year-old manager of a small Islamic nongovernmental organization (NGO) in Ankara, Turkey. Ibrahim had been involved in Islamic charity networks since his youth. On this particular day, I was scheduled to meet Ibrahim in his office. When I arrived, I observed that a group of people—mostly young women and their children—were standing outside the entrance. Later, I realized that they were waiting for their names to be called so that they could go inside and collect their aid. Inside, I found Ibrahim with two visitors from the governor’s office discussing a new poverty relief project that would be administered jointly with the local government. After his visitors left and we completed our interview, Ibrahim wanted to show me around. The NGO had recently moved into this new building which had been provided by the Justice and Development Party’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) municipality for free. Ibrahim apologized for “the mess” and explained that “things were not yet organized.” Even so, he introduced me to a number of volunteers who were preparing for the “assistance distribution day.” A young man was checking records on a computer, while a young woman was attaching the list of “recipients” to a brown clipboard before stepping outside to let people in. These volunteers worked from an office that had a large wooden desk, new corporate-style furniture, and freshly painted light-blue walls. Five large file cabinets stood against one of the walls, while four chairs were lined up against another one. Ibrahim explained to me that they were in the process of transferring their old files into a new computer database.

After showing me how the electronic database worked, Ibrahim then walked me to the social market—the NGO’s largest room where they stored most of the donated goods and other available items. The spatial organization of this warehouse resembled that of a commercial supermarket. As we walked down aisles of nonperishable food, weather-appropriate clothing, and other household items, Ibrahim told me about their “donation management system,” which allowed them to account for donated items “as if they were a real business.” At one point, he stopped to pick up a pair of red children’s shoes and showed me the barcodes affixed to their soles. In an excited voice, he explained: “You see, every item here has a barcode. This type of work cannot be done with 90% certainty; it must be 100%. We are responsible for the donations that are entrusted to us. We need to be able to account for these items because we will be questioned about our actions in the afterlife. We do not want recipients to feel humiliated; we want them to feel like they are in a real supermarket. It is important that they have a dignified experience.”

Ibrahim’s account represents a peculiar assemblage that has become normalized in the field of Islamic charity in Turkey. Charitable giving is part of a longstanding religious tradition that ordains Muslims to be generous toward those who are less fortunate. This aspect of the Islamic faith can be seen here in the collection of monetary and in-kind donations which are later redistributed to the poor and the needy. Except, Ibrahim’s reasoning merged a religious sensibility with a managerial logic: each one of the donated items had to be registered and accounted for. In his mind, such a combination was instrumental for serving the needs of the poor in a dignified—and Islamic—manner. He thus cared about the emotional experience of aid recipients as much as he tended to their eternal salvation. This was precisely what he—and his co-workers—sought to bring about by curating an experience for aid recipients that resembled a visit to a commercial supermarket. Ibrahim was an observant Muslim who prayed in the corner of his office during the workday. He refrained from shaking my hand and avoided making direct eye contact during our conversations. He often invited his female secretary to join us so that we would not be alone in a room. But he also believed that enhancing the emotional well-being of beneficiaries through managerial innovations was an extension of his Islamic devotion. His articulation of faith-based giving through an assemblage of religious, administrative, and emotional concerns is emblematic of a larger shift in the field of social service provision in Turkey.

How does one make sense of Ibrahim’s expression of Islamic charity through a vocabulary of managerial practices alongside his concerns about the emotional well-being of aid recipients? What does such a juxtaposition of religious values, managerial rationalities, and affective politics tell us about poverty governance in Turkey? What kind of a welfare regime emerges when private charity is neither excluded nor merely tolerated, but rather actively incorporated into the governmental apparatus?

The Muslim Social suggests that these questions can best be answered by studying the politics of “small things” (Cruikshank 1999, 1)—such as a barcode placed on a donated pair of red children’s shoes. These seemingly mundane details, I claim, are technologies of government that arrange and configure social bonds, encounters, and relations. Through an analysis of Islamic neoliberalism as a governmental assemblage, I examine the advent of the Muslim Social—an entire apparatus that seeks to govern poverty in accordance with multiple Islamic social projects, and which I argue, treats the social as a problem of technical management and affective attachment. … The Muslim Social emerges as a complex phenomenon, embracing the legitimacy of transparency, of new public management, a higher moral value placed on formal social relationships, stricter methods of inspection, and an elaborate system for administering the collection of donations and the distribution of funds. These technologies of managerialism shaped—and were shaped by—an Islamic language of care, compassion, and charity that cultivated public sentiments among Turkish citizens. 

…

In the midst of these transformations, the AKP introduced a series of legal-institutional reforms that revamped the welfare regime. … Throughout the 2000s, one can thus observe the emergence of a new strategy for governing the social; this concern over the lack of “organization” was shared by public and private actors who argued that the unproductive use of experts, programs, and resources was partly caused by the eradication of Islamic socio-economic customs, practices, and institutions. The primary objectives of welfare reform were twofold: to improve governmental interventions, mechanisms, and programs of social service provision, and to achieve these goals within an “Islamic” framework—combining a nostalgic rendering of the Ottoman imperial past, a selective reading of the Republican state tradition, and a nuanced disavowal of Kemalist ideology. In the process of designing and instituting a neoliberal welfare regime, the AKP and its supporters turned to faith-based notions of care, charity, and compassion. A series of conferences, forums, and workshops were organized during the early 2000s. These venues brought together intellectuals, bureaucrats, and civil society practitioners who debated the role of religion in poverty alleviation, and envisioned multiple Islamic social imaginaries to this end. Consequently, a complex web of interventions, technologies, practices, and rationalities were deployed to find Islamic solutions to modern-day problems. “Government through community” (Rose 1996) gradually became the standard, transforming state–civil society relations, the balance between public welfare and private charity, as well as institutional norms and cultural meanings.

Instead of marking a retreat into traditional belief systems or exemplifying the co-optation of local pristine values by capitalist modernity, the political deployment of “community” in Turkey resembles forms of neoliberal governance elsewhere. … By neoliberalism, I am referring to an assemblage of flexible elements that are articulated by local actors in context-specific ways. Such a definition privileges local contexts at the expense of a top-down notion of neoliberalism “as a thing that acts in the world” (Kingfisher and Maskovsky 2008, 118). Assemblage thinking, as a theoretical device, repudiates treating Islam and neoliberalism as uniform entities with deterministic outcomes. Instead, it invites close attention to how each is reproduced, circulated, and lived in practice. In doing so, assemblage thinking makes it possible to highlight not only the malleability of neoliberalism but also the plurality of Islamic piety. Assemblage, thus, is a way of making visible something that is already there: the co-constitution of religious and social experience. Moreover, conceptualizing Islamic neoliberalism as a governmental assemblage intervenes in the assumed dichotomies of global/local, market/community, and universal/particular—binaries that continue to constrain scholarship on religious politics and economic globalization in non-Western contexts. Since Islam is conceptualized as the West’s anthropological other, too often it is taken to represent a local sense of pristine “community.” But the people whose experiences, ideas, and practices form the focus of this book uphold neoliberal elements, such as commodification, entrepreneurialism, privatization, and individualization, as much as they endorse communitarian values, such as belonging, compassion, and solidarity. A focus on assemblage, therefore, allows acknowledging that community is not external to, but constitutive of, Islamic neoliberalism.