Ethnog­ra­phy of Polic­ing: Provo­ca­tion, Affect and the Author­i­tar­i­an State

A Con­ver­sa­tion with Deniz Yonu­cu, New­cas­tle University

This event is based on Deniz Yonucu’s recent­ly pub­lished book Police, Provo­ca­tion, Pol­i­tics: Coun­terin­sur­gency in Istan­bul. (Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty Press, 2022). In it she presents a coun­ter­in­tu­itive analy­sis of con­tem­po­rary polic­ing prac­tices, focus­ing par­tic­u­lar atten­tion on the incite­ment of coun­ter­vi­o­lence, per­pet­u­al con­flict, and eth­no­sec­tar­i­an dis­cord by the state secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus. Shed­ding light on coun­terin­sur­gen­cy’s affect-and-emo­tion-gen­er­at­ing divi­sive tech­niques and urban dimen­sions, the book shows how coun­terin­sur­gent polic­ing strate­gies work to inter­vene in the orga­ni­za­tion of polit­i­cal dis­sent in a way that both coun­ters exist­ing align­ments among dis­si­dent pop­u­la­tions and pre­vents emer­gent ones. Draw­ing on her insights into these forms of urban polic­ing in Istan­bul, we would like to dis­cuss how they are sit­u­at­ed in the glob­al his­tor­i­cal con­text and in which ways they pro­vide a back­ground to the author­i­tar­i­an state pol­i­tics we are wit­ness­ing in Turkey today. 

Deniz Yonu­cu is Lec­tur­er in Soci­ol­o­gy at the School of Geog­ra­phy, Pol­i­tics and Soci­ol­o­gy, New­cas­tle Uni­ver­si­ty. She received her PhD in Social Anthro­pol­o­gy from Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty in 2014. She holds two MA degrees in Social Sci­ences from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go and in Soci­ol­o­gy from Bogazi­ci Uni­ver­si­ty. Her teach­ing and research inter­ests lie at the inter­sec­tion of polit­i­cal and legal anthro­pol­o­gy and urban stud­ies, with a focus on the Mid­dle East. She is a co-founder and co-con­venor of the Anthro­pol­o­gy of Sur­veil­lance Net­work (ANSUR).  

The event is co-organ­ised by the Depart­ment of Anthro­pol­o­gy and Cul­tur­al Research and the Research Group Soft Author­i­tar­i­anisms. 

To reg­is­ter please send an email to: xiaoling@uni-bremen.de