Elif M Babül

Bureaucratic Intimacies

Translating Human Rights in Turkey

• Broschiertes Buch

Produktbeschreibung

Elif M. Bab¿l is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Mount Holyoke College.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: Stanford University Press
• Seitenzahl: 248
• Erscheinungstermin: 3. Oktober 2017
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 226mm x 151mm x 20mm
• Gewicht: 371g
• ISBN-13: 9781503603172
• ISBN-10: 1503603172
• Artikelnr.: 47771869

Autorenporträt

Elif M. Babül is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Mount Holyoke College.

Inhaltsangabe

Contents and Abstracts
Introduction: Standards and Their Tinkering
chapter abstract
This chapter opens the book by laying out the theoretical foundations,
historical context, and methodological background of the study. It situates
human rights training programs for government workers in Turkey within the
larger framework of EU harmonization and bureaucratic reform, and as
enactments of transnational standardization and international development.
The chapter also contextualizes the trainings by providing background on
the history of the human rights movement in Turkey as well as the history
of Turkey-EU relations. It ends with an elaboration of the research methods
and a discussion of the book's general contribution to anthropological
studies of global phenomena and transnational processes.
1Training Bureaucrats, Practicing for Europe
chapter abstract
This chapter provides an overview of the bureaucratic field in Turkey as a
deeply hierarchical setting that houses human rights trainings. Turkey's
accession to the EU requires the reorganization of this hierarchical field
in order to promote more egalitarian and cooperative state-society
relations. Human rights training programs challenge the traditional elite
status of Turkish government workers, forcing them to recalibrate the basis
of their bureaucratic authority and governmental legitimacy. Rather than
basing their claims to governmental legitimacy on standing above ordinary
citizens, government workers are now compelled to argue that they have the
right to govern because they come from within the Turkish society.
2Human Rights, Good Governance, and Professional Expertise
chapter abstract
This chapter focuses on the bureaucratic reform efforts in Turkey that aim
to transform the country's governmental machinery in line with the EU's
good governance framework. The explicit purpose of these efforts is to
transform public administration from a realm that thrives on hierarchy into
a systematic apparatus that produces service. Human rights training
programs are situated within this larger framework of capacity building and
bureaucratic reform, which leads to reframing human rights as matters of
professionalism and expertise. Despite the efforts to carve out a
professional bureaucratic realm devoid of emotions and politics in line
with good governance, individual initiative, personal discretion,
conscience, paternalistic care and ideological commitments come back to
haunt human rights trainings.
3Human Rights Education and Adult Learning
chapter abstract
This chapter examines the pedagogical models and specific educational
techniques that inform human rights trainings as traveling forms that are
used in similar training programs around the world. These pedagogical
settings are saturated with asymmetrical power relations arising from
bureaucratic hierarchies and transnational inequalities. Training programs
use participatory models of learning and adult education techniques to
level these hierarchies, and to make training less threatening and more
acceptable for Turkish government workers.
4Translation and the Limits of State Language
chapter abstract
This chapter analyzes the actual practices of the models of education by
focusing on the practices and politics of translation that take place
during the training seminars. Translation both as a metaphor and an actual
practice works to manage the implicit foreignness of the human rights
rhetoric at human rights trainings. As a result of these management
strategies, human rights issues are translated in a domesticating mode
during the training programs. This mode of translation ends up not
challenging but consolidating the boundaries of the sayable and non-sayable
in the Turkish official domain.
5Dramas of Statehood and Bureaucratic Ambiguity
chapter abstract
This chapter focuses on the performative interactions between the foreign
trainers and the Turkish government workers participating in human rights
training programs. These programs contain both formal and informal venues
of performance, ranging from inauguration ceremonies to role-plays. While
formal venues enable the representatives of Turkey and the EU to perform
the protocol of transnational bureaucratic encounters, everyday
interactions between Turkish government workers and foreign experts present
the training audiences with the opportunity to act like the state. The
audiences employ various strategies to turn translation instances,
classroom discussions, and group exercises into performances through which
they speak back to the foreign parties of the training. Furthermore,
various participants also employ these situations to mark their position
and status among their peers, and to enact a condition of common sociality
that defines the world of government workers in Turkey.
Conclusion: Of Fragments and Violations
chapter abstract
Amidst the disquieting upsurge of authoritarian policies and populist
politics in the country, this chapter seeks to account for how seemingly
progressive and liberal projects such as bureaucratic reform and human
rights trainings can coexist with (and sometimes even lead to) violent
state practices and an illiberal form of governance. It concludes the book
with an elaboration of the performance of bureaucratic intimacies during
human rights training programs. Enabled by the particular structure and
implementation of the trainings themselves, these performances end up
generating a community of knowers of bureaucratic secrets, instead of a
community of believers in universal human rights values. The kind of
understanding that emanates from such a community contributes to prolonging
the environment of impunity and unaccountability that continues to shape
the governmental realm in Turkey.