Partners in Patriarchy: Faith-Based Organizations and Neoliberalism in Turkey

Abstract

Faith-based organizations (FBO) have become active vehicles of neoliberal governmentality in the last decade. FBOs have been assuming increasing responsibilities in service delivery and welfare provision. They have also become key actors in cultivating the ideational environment that facilitates the effective functioning of market rationality. The empirical findings of this research demonstrate that faith-based organizations in Turkey equip neoliberal governmentality by facilitating the market logic that externalizes the cost of social reproduction to households. Islamic NGOs, examined in this study, promote a normative and traditional model of social reproduction, which rests upon religious familism, gender complementarity, and pronatalism. Faith-based organizations co-constitute neoliberalism by providing theopolitical legitimacy to neoliberal social welfare systems and, in the process, reinforce the patriarchal gender contract in the public and private spheres.

Keywords

faith-based organizations Islamic NGOs neoliberalism social reproduction religious familism gender complementarity

Introduction

Over the last decade, Turkey has seen a significant growth in the number and scope of Islamic non-governmental organizations, at a rate similar to the worldwide NGO boom of the 1980s and 1990s. Islamic charities and non-governmental organizations have become active partners of the state in the areas of welfare provision and poverty alleviation, particularly since the early 2000s, throughout the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government’s intensive neoliberalization program. The organizations have not only been taking on increasing responsibilities in resource allocation and service delivery but they also have been influential in shaping the moral landscape through information politics. This article analyzes the discourse and practices of Islamic NGOs in Turkey in the area of social reproduction and argues that faith-based organizations reproduce the ideational infrastructure that forwards and facilitates neoliberal governmentality. By promoting a social reproduction model that perceives the family and traditional solidarity networks as the moral guardians and economic safety nets of the society, Islamic NGOs provide theopolitical legitimacy to neoliberal social welfare programs.

By definition, faith-based organizations (FBOs) are voluntary associations whose mission and work are informed by religious and spiritual belief systems (Berger, 2003; Clarke, 2007). They typically work in the areas of development, charitable aid, and service provision. In the developing world, the remarkable growth of FBOs is concomitant with the expansion of neoliberalism. Faith-based organizations, alongside secular NGOs, provide a wide range of social services in contexts where structural adjustment programs and aggressive neoliberalization efforts resulted in poverty, displacement, and social exclusion (Bayat, 2002; Clark, 2004; Wiktorowicz, 2004). International faith-based organizations provide much of humanitarian aid, poverty relief, and social assistance work in Africa (Belshaw et al., 2001; Bornstein, 2005; Haar and Ellis, 2006; Hearn, 2002), Asia (Keshavjee, 2014; Tomalin, 2013) and Latin America (Hefferan et al., 2009; Occhipinti, 2005).

Following the World Bank’s global research project on poverty, which demonstrated that poor people rank faith-based groups much higher than state institutions and secular organizations in responsiveness, trustworthiness, and fairness (Narayan, 1999), researchers and development practitioners alike have praised FBOs for their efficiency and effectiveness in international aid and development. Analysts have maintained that FBOs make more relevant partners compared to their secular counterparts because they have cultural, spiritual, and logistical proximity to local communities, long-term grassroots presence, access to the poorest areas, and ability to assess the actual needs of local communities (Bradley, 2005; De Cordier, 2009; Hoksbergen, 2005; Occhipinti, 2005).¹

The dramatic rise of faith-based organizations as welfare and development partners in neoliberal restructuring efforts has opened up new lines of inquiry into the ways in which non-state actors co-constitute neoliberal governmentality.² A growing number of scholars have started to point out the congruence between the logic of neoliberalism and FBO discourse and practices. Focused, in large part, on examining the individual responsibility and self-investment ethos of the neoliberal doctrine, this emerging literature examines the ways in which FBOs cultivate self-investing subjectivities that are responsible for their own social reproduction. As Brown (2006) notes, the neoliberal political rationality extends and implements market rationality in all spheres of social action and, in doing so, produces consumer subjects in charge of their ‘self-care’. FBOs that operate within the neoliberal logic offer individualized solutions to structural systems of social exclusion in an efficient and professional manner: they identify the ‘deserving poor’ (Beaumont and Dias, 2008); indicate individual and spiritual causes for poverty (Bornstein, 2005; Hackworth, 2010); and suggest uplift through personal responsibility (Atia, 2012; Goode, 2006).

However, the cultivation of self-investing subjectivities is only one side of the neoliberal social reproduction coin. The neoliberal welfare model also relies upon community and family-based support systems to function as the economic bedrock against the consequences of market initiatives and take over the work of social reproduction (Bakker and Gill, 2003; Bakker, 2007; Buss and Herman, 2003). In the realm of social reproduction, neoliberalism aptly fuses the self-enterprising individualism rhetoric with elements of conservative communitarianism such as tradition, naturalized gender roles and, specifically, the family (Brown, 2007; Van Houdt and Schinkel, 2013). Therefore, the cultivation of an ideational infrastructure that legitimizes assigning the work of social reproduction to community and family-based support systems is equally essential. FBOs make ideal partners to the neoliberal project in this area: they predominantly promote a conservative-communitarian approach to social reproduction, stress the sanctity of ‘traditional family values’ (Bradley, 2011; DeTemple, 2006; Tadros, 2011), and consider rehabilitating the family unit as the key to healing the larger community (DeTemple et al., 2009; Hogue, 2009).

The organizations examined in this study are a case in point. Since the early 2000s, the AKP government has supported and mobilized civil initiatives and traditional community networks in order to manage the welfare consequences of neoliberalization. Within this context, Islamic NGOs have held central roles in coping with rising poverty and social exclusion. The organizations are more than simply efficient vehicles of service delivery; they serve as active partners of the state in laying the ideational groundwork for conservative-neoliberal governmentality. The discourse and practices of Islamic NGOs in Turkey promote traditional forms of solidarity as they consider the family institution the true guardian of the moral order as well as the economic safety net for communities.

The following analysis also demonstrates that the faith-based organization–neoliberal government partnership has profound implications for the private sphere. Transferring the state’s responsibility in social care and protection to families and community networks reconfigures the relations of social reproduction, with consequences for women’s care labor. Islamic NGOs, examined in this study, promote a normative and traditional conceptualization of family, which is marked by a well-defined division of labor and gender-role hierarchy. The social reproduction model, fostered by the organizations, rests upon religious familism, gendered division of labor in private and public spheres, and pronatalist biopolitics. Faith-based organizations, this article argues, co-constitute neoliberalism by reproducing the ideational infrastructure of neoliberal market rationality and, in the process, reinforce the patriarchal gender contract in the public and private spheres. In what follows, I discuss the data and terminology, present a brief overview of neoliberalization and the integration of faith-based organizations into social welfare management systems, and provide a background to charity-based assistance networks in Turkey. In the remainder of the article, I discuss the ways in which Islamic NGOs reinforce the neoconservative social development and welfare assistance model by promoting a social order that exalts traditional constructions of motherhood, family, and gender complementarity in the public and private spheres.

Data and Terminology

In the civil society and development literature, the terms ‘religious NGOs’, ‘faith-based organizations’, and ‘faith-based initiatives’ have often been used interchangeably to refer to organizations whose work is informed by religious teachings. The Turkish civil society/democratization/development scholarship too has used different labels to refer to the same organizational sphere, and sometimes even the very same organizations, e.g. religiously motivated civil society associations (Göçmen, 2013); religiously oriented organizations (Sarkissian and Özler, 2012); NGOs of an Islamic character (Bugra and Keyder, 2006), Islamic NGOs (Kadioğlu, 2005), Islamist civil society organizations (Ozgur, 2012); as well as faith-based organizations or Islamic faith-based organizations (Atalay, 2013; Isik, 2014; Kaya, 2015; Koc, 2014; Morvaridi, 2013), to name a few. Others have refrained from employing a term altogether and used broad descriptions, such as ‘charity associations and philanthropic groups known for their Islamic tendencies’ (Bozkurt, 2013; Eder, 2010).

The term ‘faith-based’ was originally coined to describe charitable organizations that were affiliated with Christian congregational and denominational structures in the US (Hall, 1999; Wuthnow, 2000). In the last two decades, however, the upsurge of religious organizations as welfare and development partners around the world has pushed the academic literature to pay critical attention to the particular ways in which voluntary associations relate to various religious traditions, doctrines, and communities and to offer a more encompassing definition.

Faith-based organizations are broadly defined as voluntary civil society organizations that derive their identity, mission, and inspiration from a religious tradition (Berger, 2003). The faith-based associational sphere contains a wide range of organizational forms, including grassroots charities; community-level organizations; multi-branch non-governmental organizations that provide goods and services in a manner that is consistent with the values and practices of the religious tradition; as well as welfare and development organizations that are directly related to religious institutions and congregations, such as Islamic mosques, Jewish synagogues, and Hindu missions (Beaumont and Cloke, 2012; Bradley, 2011; Clark, 2004; Petersen, 2012; Rew and Bhatewara, 2012; Shukr, 2005).

The data in this study comes from 48 in-depth interviews with Islamic FBO representatives, spokespeople, and members; the analysis of published material, including periodicals, bulletins, press releases, conference proceedings, and reports; and participant observation of community organizations’ work with women and children. Organizations mostly concentrate their efforts on charitable aid, poverty alleviation, health services, orphan care, educational assistance, religious socialization, and vocational training. All organizations legitimize their normative activity with reference to Islamic faith and values. They have mission statements that explicitly identify Islamic doctrine or tradition as the normative framework, focus their efforts on weaving religion into the moral and social fabric of their communities, and run projects that have their roots in Islamic theology, as evidenced by numerous verses and hadiths that obligate helping the poor and praise allocating resources for community welfare.

While there are numerous voluntary associations in Turkey that are the beneficiaries of Ottoman-era waqfs and still operate under similar organizational and financial models,³ the organizations analyzed in this article were founded in the early 2000s, as formal non-governmental organizations (sivil toplum kuruluslari), following the amendments to the Law of Associations. Some of these organizations are formerly informal religious networks that adopted the NGO model and reestablished themselves as formal organizations; others are philanthropic initiatives by conservative businessmen. The organizations are not directly connected to denominational structures in the way evangelical FBOs in the US are, but a number of them have direct and indirect relationships with religious orders (tarikats) and local congregations (cemaat).

Family and Neoliberal Social Welfare Management in Turkey

The 14-year rule of the AKP government is marked by the consolidation of neoliberalism in Turkey (Bozkurt, 2013; Bugra and Savaskan, 2012). The government has intensified the country’s 30-year neoliberalization efforts through an aggressive privatization program, commodification of health and education services, a new labor law that legalized flexible work, and the redistribution of state assets. Public utilities of all kinds, most state enterprises, public institutions, and the provision of social welfare were gradually privatized (Bugra and Keyder, 2006; Onis, 2011) and public spending on services such as education, health care, and social security were reduced (Cosar and Yeğenoğlu, 2009; Eder, 2010).

Neoliberalization in AKP’s Turkey has also meant coupling market initiatives with a strong dose of socio-cultural conservatism (Karaman, 2013). Throughout its tenure, the government has advocated a moral framework built upon a thick notion of Islamic solidarity, tradition, family values, and gender complementarity. This mélange of neoliberalism and neoconservatism is best demonstrated in AKP’s approach to social welfare management. Social policy, throughout AKP government’s tenure, has been equated with family policy in which the family is the engine of social security, solidarity, and morality (Kocamaner, 2014; Yazıcı, 2012). The ideal Turkish family, frequently invoked by the members of the AKP government, is a multi-generational unit that functions as a social safety net in times of economic hardship, safeguards values and tradition against foreign influences, and transfers them to the next generation. In this context, social assistance schemes, which minimize the state’s responsibility in providing institutional care, task the family unit with the care of the children, disabled, and the elderly (Acar and Altunok, 2013; Kiliç, 2008).

Mobilizing traditional forms of solidarity and the family institution in the interest of political projects is not unique to neoliberalism. Feminist scholars have written extensively on the political significance of the family institution, particularly during periods of nation-building and socio-political restructuration (Gal and Kligman, 2000; Haney, 2002). The family has always been a fertile ground for political entrepreneurs to organize the private sphere, gender relations, and social reproduction (Abu-Lughod, 1998; Yuval-Davis et al., 1989). The neoliberal restructuring of the global economy, in the forms of cost-cutting social policy and government retrenchment from welfare provision, has once again articulated the family as a locus of governance (Bedford, 2008; Larner, 2000; Smith, 2008).

Designating the family as the ideal social security unit reflects and reproduces the gender division of labor and role hierarchy in the household (Bakker, 2007; Bedford and Rai, 2010). Particularly in the Turkish context, lack of sufficient levels of affordable childcare and public services, coupled with a series of legal regulations in the areas of reproduction regarding women’s fertility, reinforce women’s position as primary caregivers of the family unit (Bugra, 2012; Coşar and Yeğenoğlu, 2011). Gendered subjectivities are defined through their membership in the family unit and women’s issues are tackled under family policy. Women are discursively constituted as mothers whose primary role is to nurture the family, raise future generations, and guard the moral order of the family unit. A pronatalist approach to population policy and the move to ban abortions complement the government’s discourse that equates womanhood with motherhood (Acar and Altunok, 2013; Dedeoğlu and Elveren, 2012; Unal and Cindoglu, 2013).

Islamic Charity Networks and the Reproduction of Patriarchy

Charity-based assistance networks have long been the cornerstone of welfare and development in Muslim societies. The precursors of contemporary Muslim faith-based charitable organizations date back to Islamic vakifs,⁴ charitable trusts and foundations funded by philanthropic endowments. As financially independent and decentralized institutions, the vakif system sponsored all spheres of public goods and services, including schools, hospitals, and infrastructure projects, particularly throughout the Middle East from the early periods of Islamic rule (Bonner et al., 2003).

In the 19th century, governments of the region started to nationalize vakif properties (Kuran, 2001). By the mid-20th century all vakifs had been centralized, bureaucratized, and integrated into state-based welfare systems (Benthall and Bellion-Jourdan, 2003; Cizakca, 2000). In Turkey, governments have redefined the social, economic, and political roles of vakifs and employed them in various ways, depending on the political ideology and developmental strategy of each era (Zencirci, 2015). In the early Republican period of economic nationalism, the state reclaimed vakif assets to fund statist industrialization and development projects. In the 1960s, the transition to a mixed economy model reconfigured vakifs as private philanthropic foundations. In the post-1980s era, concomitant to the neoliberalization of the Turkish economy under the Motherland Party governments, vakifs were reconfigured once more, this time as non-governmental welfare organizations that focus on poverty alleviation.

Following the 1995 constitutional amendments that repealed restrictions on associational activity, Turkey has witnessed an NGO boom. Since 2002, particularly Islamic-oriented voluntary associations have received considerable support from the AKP government and were articulated into the state’s welfare management programs (Morvaridi, 2013). Similar to all organizations that work in welfare provision and poverty alleviation, Islamic NGOs endeavor to manage the socioeconomic consequences of neoliberal commodification and market rule. They often function as intermediaries between central government agencies, private businesses, local administrations, and aid recipients. Organizations identify the needs of local communities, select the deserving poor and deliver in-kind assistance (Isik, 2014).

Islamic NGOs are distinguished through their efforts to address socioeconomic problems within an Islamic framework. They routinely invoke a duty-oriented language of Islamic values and moral principles. This synthesis of socioeconomic needs and religious values is particularly salient in the area of social reproduction. Islamic NGOs frame social reproduction in strong moral terms that link the private sphere to traditional collective values of family, nation, and Islam. The common discursive thread that runs through all of these projects is the emphasis on 1) religious familism, 2) a ‘gender justice’ model that rests upon a patriarchal gender contract, and 3) the cult of motherhood interwoven with pronatalist biopolitics.

Religious Familism

Islamic NGOs complement the AKP government’s social policy objectives primarily by reproducing and operationalizing the party’s family-oriented welfare vision. Familism,⁵ as a value system, promotes commitment to the family unit over the needs and interests of its individual members. It operates as a mechanism that boosts feelings of loyalty and solidarity to the nuclear family and, by extension, to the immediate community. It often manifests itself in subjugation of self to the family, interdependence, cooperation, showing respect for elders, and familial responsibility for social reproduction (Leitner, 2003; Revillard, 2006; Schwartz, 2007).

Islamic organizations in Turkey cast the familism rhetoric within a religious framework where the salvation of the family unit in the modern age hinges on reinstating religious values into its emotional life, social relations, and social functions. This version of religious familism (Edgell and Docka, 2007) not only demands loyalty, commitment, filial piety, and devotion of each member to the family but also links the moral fabric of the ‘good family’ to religious belief and practice. One of the primary arguments of family-oriented FBOs is that the pervasiveness of individualization and westernization compromises the family institution’s position as the moral anchor of the society. In their perspective, battered by an increasing divorce rate, marriage age, and neo-local residence patterns, the family institution is in a state of crisis. Such changes in demographic trends, according to NGO spokespeople, are indicative of the erosion of family values, which ‘absolutely unravels the moral fabric of the Turkish society’.⁶ Therefore, the organizations regularly run projects that aim to strengthen the moral rectitude of communities and concentrate their efforts into specific issue areas such as the rising divorce rate, delayed marriage age, decrease in fertility rate, and the weakening of extended family ties. Organizations typically engage in information politics and implement community-level projects to bolster commitment to the family and community. They publish magazines and pamphlets, and organize conferences and workshops on family, socialization, and media literacy. Women’s organizations carry out socialization and moral education projects for children and teenagers, such as picnics, art and culture trips, book clubs, tea times, and movie hours, in order to promote a greater connection with the community. Concerned about the spiritual wellbeing of the family unit, many organizations offer Qur’anic and moral education classes to mothers and their children.

The emphasis on the family as a unit rather than a collection of individual members is best exemplified in the way in which NGOs and working groups approach the issue of domestic violence. The organizations do not dispute that domestic violence is a pressing social issue but they disagree with a gender stratification explanation of the problem and associated solution strategies. In their view, domestic violence is an indicator of a ‘family in crisis’ where family members have lost sight of core values and morals, feel oppressed by the demands of modern life, and fail to communicate effectively. Therefore, the first step in addressing the issue is educating spouses in effective communication and interpersonal skills. Several Islamic NGOs offer trainings in stress management strategies in order to ‘help spouses cope with the pressures of everyday life in a constructive manner’.⁷ They regularly collaborate with local governments and reach out to local communities through ‘Family and Religious Guidance Offices’ (Aile Irşat Burolari) run by the branch offices of the Department of Religious Affairs in local provinces. Organizations, in collaboration with the Family and Religious Guidance Offices, offer lectures and seminars on religion, conditions of the Islamic marriage, running a pious household, and, most importantly, communication skills.

According to Islamic NGOs, an accurate diagnosis and effective treatment of the family institution’s problems require the concerted effort of multiple actors, including the state. NGO spokespeople frequently remark that states, governments, and intergovernmental agencies unwisely focus their attention on individual family members, such as women and children, when they should channel their resources into healing the family as a unit.⁸ Family, according to this perspective, is ‘the refuge to the individual’ and an institution ‘without a viable alternative’.⁹ Approaching domestic violence from a macro-structural gender stratification perspective is not a feasible solution, the organizations argue, as it will exacerbate the dissolution of the family unit and the values that hold families together. The answer, then, is not ‘propagating the idea that the family is an outdated institution that is unsafe for women’¹⁰ but supporting families that are going through a period of crisis.

Patriarchal Gender Contract and ‘Gender Justice’

The familist position, upheld by the Islamic NGOs, prescribes a biologically deterministic gender regime in which women and men are seen to have different qualities and talents by nature. Members and spokespeople of the organizations maintain that familial order and solidarity rest upon a gender-based division of labor where men and women contribute to the unit’s wellbeing by mobilizing their innately unique skills and abilities. They take an essentialist position where women’s true nature is motherhood and argue that the empowerment of women can best be achieved within the framework of patriarchal gender contract.¹¹ In that respect, the organizations argue that the gender equality discourse ‘propagandized by feminist movements’ has to be replaced by a ‘gender justice’ model that accounts for ‘the natural differences between sexes’.¹²

As a set of normative beliefs that organizes the private sphere, familism stands in direct opposition to the feminist consciousness (Revillard, 2006). For Islamic NGOs the feminist perspective on social relations, particularly treating gender as a social construct, not only fails to empower women but also victimizes them further. The main misconception of feminist movements, according to the organizations, is their insistence that women are the perpetual victims of existing traditions, laws, and social systems. Feminism, in their view, misleads women into thinking that values such as family privacy and marriage sanctuary are merely façades of legitimacy that disguise women’s exploitation and subordination in the society. In the words of one NGO spokesperson, ‘women are now constantly told to get an education, participate in the labor force, and achieve financial independence as individuals’.¹³ The gender equality discourse ‘pushes women to participate in the paid labor force and tells them not to become mere homemakers like their mothers’.¹⁴ This ‘flawed perception of equality’¹⁵ takes a toll on women’s emotional, spiritual, and physical wellbeing. Women are distressed and exhausted as they ‘compete with men in the workplace and try to complete their household chores’.¹⁶ In their struggle to meet the demands of both the public and private spheres, women ‘overexert themselves to look strong’.¹⁷

‘Incessant bombardment of so-called empowerment messages’,¹⁸ according to NGO leaders and spokespeople, are detrimental not only to women, but also to the family institution and the Turkish social fabric. Women, who are the building blocks of families, become their husbands’ competitors in all spheres of life. According to the organizations, the women’s rights discourse, ‘sold in the name of equality and empowerment’,¹⁹ masculinizes women, damages their feminine identity, and alienates spouses in the private sphere. As women abandon fundamental social norms and values, the family institution and the larger social structure start to crumble.

Islamic NGOs propose replacing the gender equality framework with gender justice, an alternative framework that aims to build social policies based on the principles of gender complementarity and biological determinism. Gender equality-based social policies, according to the organizations’ spokespeople, neither emancipate women nor maintain social cohesion, as evidenced by the high rates of divorce, suicide, drug use, cohabitation, and single-parent homes in countries that have implemented such policies (Sahin and Gultekin, 2014). The gender justice approach, on the other hand, recommends designing public policy according to the ‘natural’ talents, abilities, and needs of men and women. The proponents of this approach argue that men and women are ‘not equal but equivalent’, and therefore their uneven experiences in the public and private spheres cannot be redressed through gender equality models. Gender justice model proposes a ‘fair sharing of roles and responsibilities’ within the household and in the workplace. For instance, it advocates extended periods of flexible and part-time employment options for women, a fair rearrangement of workplace tasks after childbirth, and a reorganization of women’s labor participation in order to allow mothers to maintain their position as the primary caregivers of their families.

The Cult of Motherhood and Pronatalist Biopolitics

Islamic NGOs lace their rhetoric of familism and gender justice with an exalted maternalism which purports that women’s central vocation is to employ their ‘caring nature to nurture their families’, and thus, future generations. The politics of familism and maternalism ‘extol the private virtues of domesticity’ (Koven and Michel, 1990) and task women with biologically and morally (re)producing the nation (Boris, 1993; Weiner, 1993). In this context, women’s reproductive capacity and childbearing function become crucial sites of politics (Unal and Cindoglu, 2013).

Islamic NGOs’ motherhood ideal calls women to recognize and appreciate the sacrifices involved in raising future generations. Womanhood is collapsed into the sheltering and sacrificing mother figure. The secret to being a woman, according to this perspective, is to purposefully choose to be one and to ‘be ready to pay the price’. If motherhood is a woman’s ultimate vocation, it should not be delayed or abandoned for the rewards of a career. Working mothers are frequently urged to reevaluate their choices and ensure that their public positions do not impede their primary task, i.e. caring for their children to the best of their abilities. Organizations warn women against ‘giving into social pressures’²⁰ and delaying marriage and motherhood until the ideal conditions are met. Particularly young women, according to the organizations, are conditioned to ‘blindly pursue careers and social lives at the expense of their responsibilities towards their families when they have the capacity to give birth to the future leaders of the nation’.²¹ At formal and informal gatherings, NGO members frequently recount cases of pious women who now struggle with infertility after years of putting off childbirth to complete their graduate (and sometimes post-graduate) degrees and establish their professional careers.

For political projects that assess social solidarity by the robustness of the family unit, the womb itself becomes a collective concern (Unal and Cindoglu, 2013). Women’s bodies are reduced to their reproductive function and tasked with serving the social fabric and moral order of the nation. Therefore, the cult of motherhood is often fused with a heavy dose of anti-abortion discourse. While Islamic organizations in this study vary in their position on family planning, their perspective on abortion largely echoes Erdogan’s statement that abortion is nothing but murder. The organizations maintain that in Islamic faith, the body is not individual property but a treasure God has entrusted for life. Individuals cannot have boundless autonomy over their bodies, and therefore irreversible actions are inadmissible. Conferences, pamphlets, and motherhood education seminars repeatedly advise women to protect and care for the life created inside their bodies at any cost.

Most FBOs run community-level projects in order to prepare young women for the proper care of the family, household and, ultimately, the nation’s future. Anadolu Genclik Dernegi (Anatolian Youth Association), for instance, urges its members that raising pious and morally conscientious women is of utmost importance for it is these women who are going to be the salvation of the nation as well as the global community of Muslims. Another organization, Vuslat Dernegi (Communion with God Association), urges mothers to take part in religious organizations and parent-teacher associations in order to improve their moral and spiritual fortitude. These groups typically organize panels, conferences, and seminars that praise the virtues of motherhood and offer courses on religious education, cooking, home economy, infant care, and basic household skills.

Taken together, the social reproduction model, promoted by the FBOs in this study, relies on a gender-appropriate division of labor where men and women have naturally differentiated and complementary tasks. A conscientious division of labor between men and women, from this perspective, requires the recognition of women’s innate caregiver position in their families. The ‘true Turkish family’ ideal, upheld by the organizations, relies upon women’s biological, emotional, and care labor. Women are expected to shoulder the responsibility of biological reproduction of the family unit, safeguard its moral wellbeing, peace, and stability, and serve as its primary caregivers. These tasks help the family unit take over the burden of social reproduction and act as a safety net for its individual members.

This social reproduction model not only reinforces the patriarchal gender contract but also facilitates the AKP government’s conservative brand of neoliberal social welfare policy. As feminist scholarship has forcefully argued, the neoliberal economy returns the work of social reproduction to where it ‘naturally’ belongs and expects women to provide many of these services (Bakker and Gill, 2003; Bedford, 2008). FBOs in this study bolster the value system that makes it possible. In their efforts to redress the social problems that result from demographic changes in the neoliberal capitalist economy, the organizations call upon women’s bodies as well as their labor to sustain the family unit’s cohesion. They aim to readjust women’s public roles in order to accommodate their caregiving responsibilities in the private sphere, instead of promoting a redistribution of reproductive tasks between spouses, providing state funding for social programs, or placing obligations on private sector employers to develop family-friendly practices. By doing so, the FBOs in this study equip the neoliberal social welfare system by externalizing the cost of social reproduction to households and by relying on women’s unpaid care labor.

Conclusion

The dramatic rise of FBOs as welfare and development partners in the developing and the developed nations is concurrent with the spread of neoliberalism across the globe. In the last 20 years, non-state actors have started to take on greater responsibilities in providing services, implementing alternative development models, and managing the welfare outcomes of structural adjustment programs and neoliberal economic policies. In many contexts, faith-based actors have become the preferred channels over their secular counterparts, as they are assumed to have more direct and stronger relationships with local communities.

A critical analysis of FBOs’ rapid incorporation into welfare and development programs brings up important questions about their roles in co-constituting neoliberalism. FBOs have become active vehicles of neoliberal governmentality not only by taking over increasing roles in service delivery and welfare provision, but also by laying down the ideational infrastructure that facilitates the effective functioning of market rationality. By offering individualized and spiritual solutions to structural problems, FBOs help cultivate the neoliberal citizens who are entrepreneurial, self-optimizing, and responsible for their own social reproduction. The findings of this research suggest that FBOs perform another consequential task in the service of neoliberal governmentality: they assist the neoliberal state in shaping the private sphere in order to deal with the consequences of commodification and market rule.

The activities of Islamic NGOs examined in this article assist the neoliberal social welfare system by assigning the task of social reproduction to families and traditional support networks. The organizations aim to readjust women’s public roles in order to accommodate their caregiving responsibilities in the households. As the analysis demonstrates, the discourse and practices of FBOs bolster the patriarchal value system, which facilitates the implementation of the neoliberal social reproduction model. The conservative ideational framework that guides faith-based organization practices and the communitarian outlook that informs neoliberal social welfare policy agendas interlock in ways that reinforce the patriarchal gender contract.

The compatibility between FBOs and neoliberal policies brings up further questions on the ideational and practical intersections between neoliberal governmentality and religious rationalities. As several scholars have noted, neoliberalism is malleable and context-dependent enough to be able to map itself onto existing rationalities (Brenner et al., 2010; Peck and Tickell, 2006; Peck et al., 2009). Terms such as religious neoliberalism (Hackworth, 2012), pious neoliberalism (Atia, 2012), pious governmentality (Salehin, 2016) and spiritual economy (Rudnyckyj, 2009) capture some of the ways in which neoliberal discourse and practices articulate into religious and spiritual frameworks. This study demonstrates that FBOs can efficiently navigate these assemblages of market rationality and religion, and shape the gendered domain of reproduction in the process. Further work on FBOs as intermediaries is needed to fill the gaps in the critical literature that examines the role of non-state actors as vehicles of neoliberalism.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2015 Middle Eastern Studies Association Meetings in Denver. I would like to thank Hikmet Kocamaner, Damla Isik, and anonymous reviewers of Critical Sociology for helpful comments and suggestions.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Notes

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