Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Palgrave Macmillan

Theocracy, Secularism, and Islam in Turkey

Anthropocratic Republic

  • Book
  • © 2021

Overview

Authors:
  1. Christopher Houston

    1. Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

  • Provides readers with a powerful conceptual tool that helps them to understand the features of state-religion relations and power dynamics.
  • Offers original contributions to multiple fields of scholarship, including to theories of secularism and post-secularism, political theory, Islamic society, and comparative politics Argues that both Kemalism and the AKP continue to institute an anthropocratic Republic

Part of the book series: Contemporary Anthropology of Religion (CAR)

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this book

Log in via an institution
eBook USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book USD 69.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Other ways to access

Licence this eBook for your library

Institutional subscriptions

Table of contents (3 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xii
    Download chapter PDF

  2. Theocracy and Anthropocracy

    • Christopher Houston
    Pages 1-29

  3. Non-theocratic Politics: Secularism and Anthropocracy

    • Christopher Houston
    Pages 31-60

  4. Anthropocratic Republic?

    • Christopher Houston
    Pages 61-89

  5. Back Matter

    Pages 91-106
    Download chapter PDF
Back to top

Keywords

About this book

In this novel and lucid work, Christopher Houston clarifies a particular modern style and practice of politics that he calls anthropocracy. In the name of popular sovereignty, anthropocracies de-legitimize the rule of God(s) even as they re-deploy it to stabilize the rule of the representatives of the people, all the while obfuscating their political conscription of the divine. 

In distinguishing anthropocracy from varieties of other secular and laicist political arrangements, as well as from theocracy, this book also gives readers a brilliant solution to what it calls the Turkish puzzle, the dilemma over how to best describe and analyze state-religion and state-society relations in the Turkish Republic. This work convincingly undermines two orthodox presumptions about Turkish politics: the claim that Turkish modernity should be considered an example of secularity; and the accusation that the current AKP government should be interpreted as Islamic. On the contrary, it argues that both Kemalism and the AKP continue to institute an anthropocratic Republic. 

Reviews

Despite being only 30,000 words, this is the most original and groundbreaking work I have read on Turkey in a decade. It sidesteps the endless polarizations and repetitions that characterize analysis of Turkey’s politics by providing a fresh way of understanding the foundational features of the Kemalist revolution that have endured over the course of the Republic. It also introduces and defines a new term that appears to have real analytic power in understanding non-theocratic politics in many places around the world. On top of this it is beautifully written and very, very clear.

—Kenan Çayır, Director, Center for Sociology and Education Studies, Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey, and Professor in the Department of Sociology, Istanbul Bilgi University, Turkey

Authors and Affiliations

  • Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Christopher Houston

About the author

Christopher Houston is Discipline Chair of Anthropology at Macquarie University, Sydney. He has carried out extensive fieldwork in Turkey on Islamic social movements, nationalism, urban processes in Istanbul, and on the Kurdish issue. His most recent book is titled Istanbul, City of the Fearless: Urban Activism, Coup d’état, and Memory in Turkey (California University Press, 2020). He was President of the Australian Anthropological Society in 2014/2015.

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Theocracy, Secularism, and Islam in Turkey

  • Book Subtitle: Anthropocratic Republic

  • Authors: Christopher Houston

  • Series Title: Contemporary Anthropology of Religion

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-79657-0

  • Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham

  • eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-79656-3Published: 13 August 2021

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-79657-0Published: 12 August 2021

  • Series ISSN: 2946-3475

  • Series E-ISSN: 2946-3483

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XII, 106

  • Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations

  • Topics: Religious Studies, general, Islam, Middle Eastern Politics

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Back to top

Search

Navigation