The politics of reproduction in Ottoman Society: 1838 - 1900
In: The body, gender and culture 12
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In: The body, gender and culture 12
In: Labor history, S. 1-12
ISSN: 1469-9702
In: International journal of Middle East studies: IJMES, Band 54, Heft 1, S. 141-148
ISSN: 1471-6380
In 1914, a Turkish novella depicting a young woman pressing a dagger to the throat of a bearded old man on its cover, with the title Bloody Fairy (Kanlı Peri), appeared for sale on bookshelves in the capital of the Ottoman Empire (Fig. 1). This relatively small book of fifty-four pages, with its price as low as 50 paras, was available to almost anybody who wanted to purchase and read it. Bloody Fairy was the first of a popular series of ten murder mysteries, National Collection of Murders (Milli Cinayat Koleksiyonu), written by Süleyman Sudi and Vassaf Kadri. On the back cover of the first book, the publishers promised readers that the series would tell matchless mysterious and murderous stories that "will arouse curiosity and excitement" (merak-aver ve heyecan-amiz ) among readers. This cover image must have been rather curious since popular crime fiction usually featured male protagonists as their central characters. In those books women were almost always the target, not the ones attacking men or committing crimes. A crime story featuring a female character leading a gang, not falling victim to a male criminal or being his lover, was not a figure that readers would expect. The preface of this book—and indeed the whole series—depicts countless oddities, strange events, enigmatic murders, and other crimes that had taken place in Istanbul during the prior twenty years. Many of these events were carried out by women. The authors write that although there was nothing astonishing in crimes committed because of a woman, women committing crimes was something never seen or heard of. Thus, they surely hoped that this extraordinary crime series about two female criminals would be a commercial success. On the back cover of the first book, they announced that the series would be published as two parts, comprising ten books each, and would be offered for sale as individual titles every Thursday. Unfortunately, their grand plans were never fulfilled; only the first ten books were published. Although the series is far from complete and we will never know about the authors' plans to unfurl further crimes and mysteries, something wondrous eventually happened: these two authors, who were never among the canon of Ottoman Turkish literature, were discovered in the 2000s. In addition to National Collection of Murders, several of their other works have been transcribed and published. Süleyman Sudi and Vassaf Kadri, who yearned for popularity in the early 20th century, indeed became popular, albeit a century late.
In: Journal of Middle East women's studies: JMEWS ; the official publication of the Association for Middle East Women's Studies, Band 15, Heft 2, S. 226-228
ISSN: 1558-9579
In: Middle Eastern studies, Band 55, Heft 3, S. 289-300
ISSN: 1743-7881
In: New perspectives on Turkey: NPT, Band 59, S. 159-162
ISSN: 1305-3299
In: Journal of women's history, Band 28, Heft 3, S. 10-16
ISSN: 1527-2036
In: Middle Eastern studies, Band 50, Heft 6, S. 976-991
ISSN: 1743-7881
In: İletişim: Araştırmaları Dergisi, Band 12, Heft 2, S. 13-40
In: International review of social history, Band 54, Heft S17, S. 45-68
ISSN: 1469-512X
SummaryThis article examines the "mutual distancing" between Ottoman labor history and women's and gender history. For this purpose, I first summarize the scholarship produced by each field and scrutinize the ways in which both fields have remained unresponsive toward one another. I then offer a specific way to make women visible to labor history in the particular setting of the Cibali Régie Factory in the early decades of the twentieth century. Using photographic images of the factory and an approach which applies gender as a conceptual tool of historical analysis, I discuss the social conditions of work, the sexual division of labor, and the channels through which power structures were established in the Cibali factory. This study does not claim to present a comprehensive history of labor in the Ottoman Empire; my goal is rather to make women visible to labor history, to remind one that women were present on the shop floor, and to discuss how the available sources can be interpreted in gendered ways. In that sense, this article challenges the mainstream of Ottoman labor history, and seeks to answer the question as to why the female workers who appear in the photographs, in archival documents, and in other sources have so far remained largely invisible in the historiography.
In: Middle Eastern studies, Band 57, Heft 2, S. 197-208
ISSN: 1743-7881