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Drawing on research that combines an ethnography of a new group of women from popular classes in
today's Turkey and a study of vigilante violence against these women, including interviews and court
files, The Body Unburdened offers a compelling explanation for the surge of hostility against women in
the global era. It chronicles the journey of the New Woman from the neoliberal global era to the
populist moment in the twenty-first century to show how the New Woman has gone from being a
desirable employee in the global service economy to a precarious body that faces the risk of violence in
the right-wing populist moment. The book argues that those emotional and embodied capacities, which
had made the New Woman attractive to service employers, catapulted her into the center of highly
contentious politics as both a feminist icon of resistance and the target of violent hostility during the
reign of Turkey's government.
List of contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1. The New Woman Feeling Her Way in Turkey
- 2. Origins of the New Woman: The Cultural Politics of Embarrassment and Its Changing Legal Status in Turkey
- 3. The New Woman at Work: Global Capitalism and the Gendered World of the Service Economy
- 4. Tables Turning Against the New Woman: The Rise of Moralist Politics
- 5. The New Woman in the Gezi Uprising: A New Political Actor or a Violable Subject?
- 6. The New Woman against the Vigilante Man: Violence, Orientations, and Disorientations
- Conclusion and Epilogue: The New Woman and Feminism in Uncertain Times
- Glossary of Turkish Terms
- References
- Index
About the author
Esra Sarioglu received her PhD from Binghamton University in 2013 and is currently a researcher at the Center for the History of Emotions, Max Planck Institute for Human Development, Berlin. Between 2016 and 2019, she worked as an assistant professor in the Gender Studies Division of the Department of Political Science and Public Administration at Ankara University, where she also served as vice-chair of the Women's Studies Center. Her research interests include gender and globalization, embodiment, emotions, work and labor, and gender politics in Turkey. Her work has appeared in
Gender, Work & Organization, Women's Studies International Forum, Safundi: The Journal of South African and American Studies, Kadin/Woman 2000, L'Homme: Europäische Zeitschrift für Feministische Geschichtswissenschaft. She has also published several book chapters and essays in Turkish and English.
Summary
Drawing on research that combines an ethnography of a new group of women from popular classes in
today's Turkey and a study of vigilante violence against these women, including interviews and court
files, The Body Unburdened offers a compelling explanation for the surge of hostility against women in
the global era. It chronicles the journey of the New Woman from the neoliberal global era to the
populist moment in the twenty-first century to show how the New Woman has gone from being a
desirable employee in the global service economy to a precarious body that faces the risk of violence in
the right-wing populist moment. The book argues that those emotional and embodied capacities, which
had made the New Woman attractive to service employers, catapulted her into the center of highly
contentious politics as both a feminist icon of resistance and the target of violent hostility during the
reign of Turkey's government.
