MZIS Vortragsreihe: Gülhan Balsoy (Universität Istanbul Bilgi), Demographic Anxieties, Pronatalism and Difference in the Ottoman Empire
09.07.2019
Historians of the late Ottoman Empire have started reconsidering the imperial past in the light of the recent studies on colonialism. Recent work has examined how difference was created as a tool of Ottoman governance especially during the during the Hamidian and Second Constitutional periods. Yet such work mainly concentrated on the discursive aspects of the creation of difference and work on the institutions and mechanisms creating difference still waits to be done. Moreover, the question of the gendered aspects of colonial governance remains almost totally unexamined in the Ottoman context. This caveat is not a minor but rather a major one since recent studies on colonialism have aptly demonstrated that control and regulation of sexual encounters and reproduction was an integral part of the colonial project. Such works strongly demonstrated that encouraging certain types of sexual behaviors and restricting others were central to the functioning of the imperial governance rather than an additive to it. In this presentation, reconsidering my previous work of the politicization of reproduction in nineteenth century Ottoman empire, I will try to explore themes of sexuality, reproduction and colonialism. In order to elaborate the broader imperial context, I will question how sexuality, marriage, and reproduction was arranged and managed in the Ottoman case. I will investigate how the management of sexual relations marked the difference between Ottoman elites and the local populations. Through this discussion, I hope to contribute to the wider investigation whether we could consider the Ottoman empire a “colonial” power or not.
Die MZIS Vorträge finden Dienstags um 18 Uhr c. t. im Hörsaal M 014 Universitätshauptgebäude Geschwister-Scholl-Platz 1 statt.
In Zusammenarbeit mit der Gesellschaft der Freunde Islamischer Kunst und Kultur und der Deutsch-Türkischen Gesellschaft Bayern e. V.