Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This talk explores the anthropologists’ efforts to make Anthropology more institutionalized and visible through their interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary large-scale research projects in Turkey, based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 15 anthropologists.

Paper long abstract

Currently, there are only 11 Anthropology Departments in Turkey, five of which were founded in the 2000s onwards. Considering that there are 208 universities in the country, it is safe to say that the discipline has a marginal status. This inevitably prompts anthropologists to be employed in other departments, such as Sociology, Cultural Studies and Political Sciences, and conduct large-scale research projects with scholars from other disciplinary backgrounds.

In this framework, this talk explores the anthropologists’ efforts to make their discipline more institutionalized and visible through their interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary large-scale research projects, funded by the national and European Union organization. It is based on semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 15 anthropologists, which focus on sharing experiences in conducting research together with researchers with various disciplinary backgrounds like computer sciences, linguistics, and political sciences in Turkey since the 2000s. This talk explores how the anthropologists take initiative in incorporating anthropology within these projects, such as theories of care and affect and methods of auto-ethnography and participant observation, as well as narrative and discourse analysis. Their efforts also include constant negotiations of disciplinary boundaries in trying to reach a consensus on practical tasks, such as time periods to be allocated for specific work packages of the research and analytical ones, such as the argumentation style while co-authoring an article. The talk covers different strategies that the anthropologists use to be as crucial teammates as the others within the projects, challenging the disciplinary hierarchies and making their disciplinary perspectives more visible and influential.