Symbolic Violence and Reproduction of Gender Inequality in Turkish Media: Case of New Bride TV Serial

Abstract

Television has capacity to reach to massive audiences and produce various cultural commodities in a considerable amount, thereby functions as a major agent in the process of socialisation and has necessarily substantial power to construct social order. Despite the development of internet technology, television, is still one of the major free time activities in Turkish society. Gender inequality is currently a challenge in Turkish society and televisions, thus becomes more of an issue. Bourdieu, as one of the most creative, productive and iconoclastic scholars of the twentieth century attempted to explicate how social order and structure is constructed and reproduced with concepts of symbolic violence, capital, habitus. The research analyses New Bride television serial with qualitative content analysis technique to look into how gender inequality is reproduced by wielding symbolic violence. New Bride television serial is the unit of the content analysis. Symbolic violence is the main category and sexual division of labour and space, exclusion from public space, androcentric vision, bodily emotions, love of dominant, ancien regime are the subcategories of the content analysis. The research reveals that New Bride television serial contributes to the reproduction of gender inequality by wielding symbolic violence.