Even I Was Tempted”

The Moral Ambivalence and Ethical Practice of Veiling-Fashion in Turkey

Bibliographic Data

ID8377366
AuthorsBanu Gökarıksel (0000-0002-2930-3131, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Anna Secor (0000-0003-1506-4552, University of Kentucky)
Year2012
Volume102
Issue4
Pages847-862
Publication date2012-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnnals of the Association of American Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0004-5608 • E-ISSN: 1467-8306
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/00045608.2011.601221
OpenAlexW2035733596
LanguageEN
Citations received54
References cited52

Veiling-fashion, with its array of brands and ever-changing styles, has been on the rise in Turkey in the past decade. Although the producers of these styles present them as the perfect melding of fashion and piety, our analysis of focus groups with consumers in Istanbul and Konya in 2009 shows that veiling-fashion is, in practice, rife with ambivalence. Veiling is undertaken in relation to the moral code of of Islam, but fashion, as consumption, works as part of an ever-shifting economy of taste and distinction. In Baudrillard's terms, veiling-fashion is morally ambivalent, caught between its function as modest covering according to Islam and its social signification. In their negotiation of this ambivalence, consumers of these styles turn veiling-fashion into an ethical practice, into part of how they form themselves in relation both to a moral code (Islam) and to the aesthetics, politics, and pleasures of their sociospatial environments. The ethical practice of veiling-fashion thus engages a complex spatial field of bodies, homes, streets, military or state spaces, and public arenas. Veiling-fashion consumers describe their daily practices in terms of a problem of self-governance, or the management of nefis, the bodily or material desires aroused by consumption and its display. In this management of nefis through the technology of veiling-fashion these women form themselves as subjects of ethico-politics in Turkey today

Aesthetics · Ambivalence · Art · Consumption (sociology) · Dress code · Islam · Negotiation · Piety · Political science · Politics · Social science · Sociology · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · History · Law · Psychology · Public Spaces through Art · Social Psychology · Turkey's Politics and Society

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