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On Sabır and Agency

2008; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 10; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/14616740802393908

1468-4470

Damla Isik,

Media Discourse and Social Analysis

Abstract This article focuses on the pious practice of sabır (patience) within the context of the weaving neighborhoods in Konya, Turkey. Through an ethnographic analysis of the everyday politics of the practice of sabır, which is central to labor relations, this article adds to and complicates feminist analyses of labor politics and the economy by highlighting the interconnected nature of ethical religious practice and labor politics. Additionally, I argue for the need to go beyond the question of whether women have or lack agency as subjects in feminist analyses of labor politics and relationships, and instead point out the need for the empirical examination of specific, contextually-bound practical conditions through and within which women cultivate various forms of ethical action and subjectivities. In pointing out the importance of a project that analyzes operations of power with a keen awareness of context, this essay presents an ethnographically grounded discussion of pious practice within the context of Konya's weaving neighborhoods, underscoring the effects of the coexistence of exploitation and empowerment on the construction of women weavers' selfhoods. Keywords: genderlaborworkreligionglobalizationhandicraftsMiddle EastTurkey Notes The carpet industry in Turkey has a strict hierarchy. Women are called dokuyucu (weaver) and are located at the bottom of the hierarchy. Carpet manufacturers (halı imalatçısı/imalatçı) are almost always male, and they provide the raw material needed for weaving (the loom, the designs and the wool). They also act as a go-between between the women weavers and the carpet exporters (halı ihracatçısı/ihracatçı). Carpet manufacturers are responsible for visiting the weaving neighborhoods, making sure the work is progressing smoothly and communicating with the weavers directly. Carpet exporters (ihracatçı) rarely, if ever, visit houses, yet they are the ones who have direct contacts to foreign clients and who make the most money. Carpets and kilims differ in weaving technique and size. A kilim is a pileless, flatwave, traditional rug. It is formed with flatweaving with two groups of woolen ropes. The horizontal group of ropes (atkı) are passed through the vertical group of ropes (çözgü). When this group of rope reaches the end, it turns back on the same path. Motifs are formed through the usage of varied colored ropes. Traditionally kilims were used by nomadic tribes for their practicality in decorating tents; hence, they tend to be smaller and lighter than carpets. Carpets are also woven on a loom; however, they are piled instead of flatweaves made by countless knots that form the final design of the carpet. They are generally larger than kilims and are more popular in the global market. Due to the fact that they are larger, they generally require bigger looms and more weavers to complete. The carpet manufacturer Reyhan was working for exclusively paid weavers to weave kilims in Konya. He had several ateliers out of Konya for carpet weaving which consisted of twenty to thirty women who wove carpets in a village structure that was separate from the houses and was called the atelier. One reason several carpet manufacturers preferred to have ateliers for carpet weaving is that the carpets ordered by clients tended to be large and needed bigger looms, which could not be accommodated in houses. Kilims, on the other hand, in general required smaller looms although, at times, certain households did weave large kilims if the household had three or four daughters who could work together in a loom and had space in the garden to accommodate that loom. It is hard to fully translate sabır into English. 'Patience' does not have some of the connotations of sabır, hence, I will use the Turkish term sabır throughout this text. The meanings and importance of sabır will be explained fully in the following pages. In her discussion on feminist scholarship, Fernandez-Kelly and Wolf (2001 Fernandez-Kelly, P. and Wolf, D. 2001. A Dialogue on Globalization. Signs, 26(4): 1243–49. [Crossref], [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]: 1247–8) frames this concern: 'Some feminist scholarship is relentless about the exploitative nature of global capital without bringing in what workers think or experience. We thus get a one dimensional view of women as victims […] A feminist author writing about Indonesian workers argued that, although women factory workers could not afford to pay for a haircut […] what really mattered was that they were still being exploited. It is easy to make such arguments when you can afford to pay for a haircut (and more), but such arrogance ignored the actual conditions surrounding the women about whom we are arguing.' Feminist researchers emphasize the need to see family relations as capitalist relations (Roldan 1988 Roldan, M. 1988. "Renegotiating the Marital Contract: Intrahousehold Patterns of Money Allocation and Women's Subordination Among Domestic Outworkers in Mexico City". In A Home Divided: Women and Income in the Third World, Edited by: Dwyer, D. and Bruce, J. 229–47. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. [Google Scholar]; Hoodfar 1997 Hoodfar, H. 1997. Between Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo, Berkeley: University of California Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]). Prügl (1999) Prügl, E. 1999. The Global Construction of Gender: Home-Based Work in the Political Economy of the 20th Century, New York: Columbia University Press. [Google Scholar] contextualizes this further by pointing out the fact that unlike the predictions of Marxist and liberal economic theories, home-based work did not disappear as production moved to factories. As defined by Bourdieu (1977) Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice, New York: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], habitus is produced by 'structures constitutive of a particular type of environment (e.g. the material conditions of existence characteristic of a class condition)' which are 'systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures' (1977: 72). According to Bourdieu (1977) Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice, New York: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], each agent is at the same time inevitably the producer and the reproducer of meaning, and the dispositions of agents consist largely of unconscious processes through which agents embody their respective class positions. These agents embody a slippage because, as Bourdieu (1977) Bourdieu, P. 1977. Outline of a Theory of Practice, New York: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar] describes it, they do not 'strictly speaking, know that what they do has more meaning than they know' (1977: 79). Habitus, in this sense, is the 'law,' the 'common code' that is 'inscribed in bodies by identical histories, which is the precondition not only for the co-ordination of practices but also for practices of co-ordination' (81). Although, through recognizing the learned nature of dispositions and their effects that then work to affect these same dispositions, Bourdieu's theory underlines the importance of the social, historical, and contextual nature of action, his approach does not pay attention to the actual processes through which this habitus is learned (Mahmood 2005 Mahmood, S. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject, Princeton: Princeton University Press. [Google Scholar]). Cantwell (1999) Cantwell, R. 1999. Habitus, Ethnomimesis: A Note on the Logic of Practice. Journal of Folklore Research, 36(2–3): 219–34. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] also highlights Bourdieu's inherent objectivism when he notes that Bourdieu's understanding of habitus is tied to a 'residue of objectivism that limits the concept of habitus to traditional societies such as the Kabyle, where evidently unchanging objective conditions theoretically produce uniform histories' (1999: 225). Instead, Cantwell (1999) Cantwell, R. 1999. Habitus, Ethnomimesis: A Note on the Logic of Practice. Journal of Folklore Research, 36(2–3): 219–34. [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar] underlines the importance of social practice in the learning process and the practice of habitus and defines habitus as 'never static, but anticipates, resists, and adapts to change, not strictly speaking an "unconscious" resource but one diffused in social practice, a sensible, if subliminal, field of achieved significance natural and conventional, which comprises a total system of orientations, or to be precise, habits or "dispositions" of orientations' (1999: 224). This broader understanding and definition of habitus as social practice that is both learned and subject to change is useful in understanding how sabır works. In this sense, sabır, for the women weavers in Konya, was part of the habitus of being a pious Muslim and was not a quasi-unconscious articulation of social structure, but a specific enactment of a virtue that was consistently monitored, nurtured, cultivated and checked in an effort to develop a specific conception of the self as a pious, good Muslim. Please see note 1. Due to length constraints, I am not able to discuss another important aspect of women's religious practice: the weekly religious meetings arranged by neighborhood women called sohbet, yet it is important to briefly mention here sohbet's presence and meaning in Konya. Briefly, sohbet sessions were weekly meetings that provided a venue for women in specific neighborhoods in Konya to get together under the leadership of a sohbet leader, who was a local woman who was respected for her knowledge of the Qur'an, to discuss matters of religion and worship as well as do memorizations of specific prayers. Also, during these sessions women conversed about daily affairs, and women weavers discussed and shared information about various work-related issues such as the kinds of designs they were weaving. The importance of ethical practices such as the practice of sabır also figured into these discussions extensively. For an excellent discussion of the relevance of Foucault's work for feminist criticism see McLaren (2002) McLaren, M. A. 2002. Feminism, Foucault, and Embodied Subjectivity, New York: State University of New York Press. [Google Scholar]. In her work, McLaren critically analyzes the problems feminists like Benhabib see in Foucault's work and argues for a re-reading of Foucault and implementation of his emphasis on power, genealogy, and historicity as well as his de-construction and de-naturalization of the subject in feminist work. Additional informationNotes on contributorsDamla IsikDamla Isik Department of Social Sciences Western Connecticut State University Danbury, CN 06810, USA E-mail: isikd@wcsu.edu