Abstract
This research extends the theory of the civilizing process of Norbert Elias to the gender issue in the Ottoman Empire and thereby in some respects provides a test of his original theory. This study is based on the assumption that the conscious policy of the Ottoman modernization by the ruling elite exhibited many symptoms resembling those of the European civilizing process. The socio-historical process of bureaucratization of the Ottoman state fostered the changes in manners and forms of cultural expression which brought with it the advance of the threshold of shame and embarrassment in gender relations during this process. Drawing on this assumption, the article looks at the changes in the way people control themselves and others in the expression of their impulses and emotions. In turn, - the question of how the margins of tolerance in sexual matters and in the expression of emotions and desires changed during this civilizing process - formulates the major concern of this paper. Since manuals on etiquette, manners books, diaries and archives are the richest sources for this purpose, this project employs the analysis of these cultural texts, in order to make inferences from the cultural transformations within the Ottoman Empire. The research hopes to offer new perspectives in reorienting the way we look at the development of the Ottoman culture within the context of figurational sociology.
Highlights
Norbert Elias is best known for his book, The Civilizing Process, originally published in German in 1939, wherein he traces most fully the connection between the personality structure of people and the structure of relationships in society at large
The main argument of this paper is that the concept of the civilizing process offers a theoretical framework for understanding the reasons of the changes in the Ottoman court elite’s sensibilities and sensitivity regarding morality, desire, sexuality, and homoeroticism, taking into consideration certain limitations in the absence of any real challenge to the power of central authority, in the disappearance of a prosperous, enterprising bourgeoisie and court aristocracy for the transmission and standardization of these changes to spread throughout the Ottoman society as it had in Europe
This article takes an Eliasian perspective on the process of bureaucratic centralization of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-nineteenth century in which the unique category of homosexuality and heterosexuality, imported from European laws, changed the existing Ottoman gender boundaries and sexual categories
Summary
Norbert Elias is best known for his book, The Civilizing Process, originally published in German in 1939, wherein he traces most fully the connection between the personality structure of people and the structure of relationships in society at large. This article takes an Eliasian perspective on the process of bureaucratic centralization of the Ottoman Empire in the mid-nineteenth century in which the unique category of homosexuality and heterosexuality, imported from European laws, changed the existing Ottoman gender boundaries and sexual categories.
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