What lies behind the amalgam of liberalism, elitism, anti-capitalism, and fascistic elements in today’s street politics? This essay analyzes this mixture in light of the shifting class locations of middle strata. Intensified business dominance has not only proletarianized some middle strata but has led to a dry life for even the privileged ones. Middle classes are now taking to the streets to reclaim their specialness. Their exact agendas might not be identical throughout the globe, but a kindred spirit of creativity (...) and aestheticized occupation unites disparate geographies of revolt. Liberal and radical analyses of the wave of revolt miss its most significant characteristics, which only a re-theorization of the new petty bourgeoisie can capture. The essay outlines a research agenda that would explore the multiple dimensions of middle-class formation, as well as the post-capitalist trajectories that might result from further politicization. (shrink)

Why has the Islamic economy, as a model of socioeconomic development, gained traction as a viable option? The existing literature suggests that the Islamic economy has been popularized by a combination of factors, including anticolonial movements, a global renewal of religiosity, and the activities of new social strata who merge piety with capitalist orientations. These approaches, however, tend to homogenize social actors, subsuming them under the overarching label of Islamism. In contrast, this article employs the lens of “intra-hegemonic struggles” to (...) identify three competing orientations of Islamism and their manifestation in the economy. Drawing on eighteen months of fieldwork in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, it argues that this contestation motivates diverse segments of the society to create and engage in the Islamic economy, rather than any single state-driven or identity-based movement. The article synthesizes three otherwise isolated bodies of work: the political sociology of articulation, new theories of Islamism, and the concept of imaginaries from economic sociology. (shrink)

This study demonstrates how profoundly Turkey's main social clevage –Islam versus Secularism – is produced and reproduced by political parties in their attempts to form coherent sociopolitical bloc as a basis of mass support. The main purpose is to challenge the paradigm which understands social cleavages to be part of a ‘social structure’ that exists prior to political articulations. According to this standard perspective, social cleavages create the demand for political parties.