This thesis aspires to contribute to the study of change instigated by social engineering projects that were devised and executed by state elites upon targeted populations. Focusing on the Turkish... Show moreThis thesis aspires to contribute to the study of change instigated by social engineering projects that were devised and executed by state elites upon targeted populations. Focusing on the Turkish case of social engineering in the 1930s and 1940s, this thesis studies such a moment of change from a perspective that is alternative to and critical of the ‘modernization’ and ‘dependency’ paradigms. It focuses on the People’s House, an institution the Turkish state established in the 1930 and 40 with the direct aim to introduce the reforms to the population. More specifically, it is a case study of two provincial People’s Houses, their clientele and their activities. Finally, it focuses on three policies of the People’s Houses, i.e. women and villager related activities, and new forms of socialization in contrast to the old coffeehouse type of socialization. This study treats the resistance and accommodation to these p olicies by local social actors as productive for the shaping of new social identities, collective and personal, but also as indicative of the limits of a state that is otherwise considered the sole instigator of social change in the literature of the Turkish Republic. Show less
