Abstract
In Bound Together: The Secularization of Turkey’s Literary Fields and the Western Promise of Freedom, Barış Büyükokutan examines the field of cultural production in Turkey to determine if inclusive secularization can be found outside the West, and he questions if secularization is a democratic ideal to unconditionally strive for. He specifically looks at the fields of poetry and the novel to discover that, beginning in the mid-1950s, the field of poetry exemplified signs of deep secularity indicated by the Taylorian “immanent frame,” or “split self.” Novelists, on the other hand, did not build cross-aisle connections—that is, pious and non-pious novelists did not interact on a regular basis. With these findings, Büyükokutan takes us on a journey—one that rivals a Sherlock Holmes adventure—through Turkish literary fields: how exactly did the field of poetry become significantly more cosmopolitan than the field of the novel? With Büyükokutan’s methodological innovations, we follow different paths and rule out dead ends to discover the mechanisms behind poetry’s unique secularization, thereby learning new theoretical lessons about secularization and the division between the West and the non-West. In this review, I recount the questions that I found the most exciting, relay the merits of the author’s innovative answers, and finish with musings allowed by this most rigorous research.
Büyükokutan asks: Why did autonomy from politics increase in poetry in the 1950s while the novel moved in the opposite direction? And second, what is the mechanism that mediates cross-aisle connections and the split self, causing the former to bring about the latter? Büyükokutan discovers that poetry gained autonomy from politics as people who would be gatekeepers were forcibly removed by state intervention. This undemocratic act, which destroyed livelihoods of innocent poets, paradoxically paved the way for cross-aisle connections. It also led to self-reflexivity and preference of form over content. Here, he makes his first theoretical intervention for students of secularity, asserting that it is not necessarily a longue durée process and that it can be formed by unpredictable events as well as by the unfolding of variables. With this finding he warns that inclusive secularization may not necessarily be achieved through a democratic path and therefore should not be championed unconditionally. Moreover, his case demonstrates a valuable lesson for scholars of state and culture: sometimes states have little control over the course of events once they have unleashed their resources, such that the final outcomes are unpredictable. Then it is up to the researcher to uncover the underlying factors that interact with state intervention.
He does exactly this as he asks whether autonomy from politics is all by itself sufficient to bring about deep and inclusive secularization in the field of poetry. In answering this question Büyükokutan bridges the macro and the micro at the meso level by relying on network analysis. Although he thinks of himself as a qualitative sociologist, he does not shy away from employing quantitative methods as he lets the theoretical conundrum drive the method. This methodological choice pays off as the reader is exposed to network connections between the pious and non-pious poets. We learn that as interaction density increases, durable cross-aisle ties will also prevail. Poets are different than novelists simply because they talk to each other more! They tend to hang out in coffee shops and taverns because the field is less solitary. As poets commit to each other every day in civil society, they also commit to the literary form. Another valuable lesson we derive from the book is that civil society and, as the author details in the last chapter, civic republicanism were necessary pillars for secularization in the field of poetry in the mid-1950s. Theoretical purchase of his endeavor culminates in a new definition of secularization: the contentious and ongoing invention of new kinds of capital, their autonomization from religious capital, and their increasing association with distinct fields (p. 20).
As to the question of whether the western-nonwestern difference exists beyond the discursive level, the author’s answer is soundly yes—and he does this without dismissing the power of discourse. He argues that the difference is not necessarily to be found between countries or regions, but within them. This means that you can find pockets of West in the East and vice versa. Turkey’s poets in the 1950s managed to live a western experience in the non-west, thus making their societies freer. Most importantly, this had nothing to do with their beliefs. Rather, it was about their patterns of socialization and the nature of literary production. The way people interacted with one another and the intensity with which humans got together had profound effects on freedom.
The author is extremely meticulous in unearthing field-specific characteristics of poetry and how these lead to a unique nonwestern secularization, while showing that the West does not have a monopoly on secularization. As one of the specific characteristics, the author recounts how poetry has a longer history in this context, while the novel only entered the Ottoman literary scene in nineteenth century. I wondered if the long tradition of poetry might have had an impact on the interaction density and what methods the author would use to answer this question. I also was left wanting more on the potential influence of poetry as a genre, as a cultural form, on the interaction density. Is there something other than publication patterns or consumption practices that makes poetry more conducive to interaction density? And does the deeply embedded nature of poetry in the Turkish context have an impact?
Büyükokutan combines field theory, civic republicanism, and the study of interaction in networks to offer a vivid picture of mid-century literary fields in Turkey. Yet the book moves beyond the case to become a theoretical source for scholars of historical sociology, religion, sociology of art, and political sociology. I think it is a marvelous example of methodological innovation in cultural sociology and a must-read not only for students of culture, but also for those who are invested in freedom, liberation, and existing peacefully while interacting with people who are dissimilar. Poets of Turkey in the mid-1950s offer us hope in the possibility of reaching these ideals.