The discipline of sociology aims to analyze social, cultural, political, economic, and legal problems that have arisen since people started living together, as well as to make comparative analyzes and offer solutions. Today, globalization, ethnic, religious, and regional wars, and economic, environmental, legal, and social crises have increased the importance of sociological research data. Ibn Haldun University Graduate Program of Sociology aims to create a new understanding, conceptualization, and research space at the point of experience, analyzing, and proposing solutions for various problems regarding human beings and society in our country and the world. Our graduate program, which is both theoretical and methodologically nourished from the world's different sociological and social science traditions, is also claiming to create a new tradition of sociology from the perspective of civilization.
Prof. Dr. Ramazan Aras
The master's program in Sociology aims to train highly competent sociologists, intellectuals, and researchers at the international level in today's local and global processes and crises. In line with our university's vision, educating experts, administrators, and diplomats equipped with knowledge and skills that can meet the needs of our country and the institutions and organizations operating in the world are among the critical missions of our program.
The very objective of the program is to improve research in the field of Sociology in our country and to train sociologists who can identify and solve problems to meet the needs of the country so that essential contributions can be obtained from this research activities both at national and international level and their effects can be disseminated.
The fact that the language of education in the program is English makes it possible for our graduates to work and conduct research worldwide.
The master's program in Sociology combines different theoretical and methodological approaches to researching, understanding, and proposing solutions for social, cultural, political, environmental, and economic crises and problems in today's societies by examining the traditions of thought in different civilizations and cultures basins comparatively.
The knowledge and skills that the graduates of the program will acquire can be listed as follows:
Individuals who want to increase or improve their knowledge and skills in sociological thinking, theory, and research methods targeted by the program are as follows:
This course is a non-credit one that aims to encourage students to re-interrogate and analyze sociological and ethnographic theories, ideas and methods through an example of their research projects. The master also aims to help students draw a road map for their research projects and carry out discussions about preparing, conducting, and writing a sociological and ethnographic project. Students of the course are encouraged to get involved in productive discussions during which the draft, raw data, field experiences, or main frameworks of the projects to be carried out are exchanged amongst them.
This course aims to allow students to participate and contribute to scientific research processes at an advanced level—course c consists of two sections. The first section will deal with fundamental scientific approaches. From positivism to Popperian falsification to Kuhn's paradigm to Feyerabend against method, strategies with their basic assumptions and realities based on those assumptions will be discussed. The second section will teach qualitative and quantitative methods and their use. Students ta ng this course will become competent in methodologies and research techniques in social sciences. They will be able to apply oreir research design to a specific problem. In addition o research methods in social sciences, ethical principles to which research results and publications should be subject will be discussed.
This course aims to examine a wide range of classical social theorists in the Muslim world and the West, from Farabi to Ibn Khaldun to Marx and Weber. The main task is to make classical social theories relevant to the present understanding of human society. In other wor s, the course's primary goal is to help students to develop a way of looking at past and contemporary issues "sociologically." In doing so, the theory will be discussed as a tool for organizing existing knowledge to generate "new knowledge. Each theorist will be understood within their own time so that specific social and historical contexts, which gave rise to their particular theory, can be thoroughly understood.
This course aims to recognize, interpret and criticize the current theories raised by different thinkers and social scientists, claiming to grasp, analyze and present solutions to the various problems encountered by other societies in the modern era. The post-mod rn, post-structuralist, colonial, post-colonial, and post-Marxist theories that emerged in the last period constitute the main discussion topics. In addition, globalization, oorientalism-Occidentalism ecological problems, political violence, changing social classes and structures, neo-colonial politics, the quest for new sovereignty and politics, and crises that are confronted in modern nation-states will be discussed through different theoretical approaches.
It aims to analyze contemporary sociological issues using Ibn Khaldun's sociology analysis tools. In this framework, modern social theories will be discussed in light of concepts and approaches such as asabiyyah, badawah, hadarah, and umran developed by Ibn Khaldun. It is intended d for students to acquire a deep understanding and analytical ability of such comparisons.
Islam and Muslim societies and cultures have been some of the most exciting subjects for researchers in social sciences. The current continuation of this interest has expanded the literature in this area of research. Nevertheless, from past to present, the labor of knowledge production in Islam and Muslim societies has carried out diverse epistemological, methodological, and theoretical problems and concerns. The fact that these problems are seen in the works of foreign (outsider) ethnographers and local (insider) researchers makes the issue more complicated. Nevertheless, despite all these critical concerns and problems, various research on Muslim societies and cultures has been constantly put forward by different social scientists. This course aims to read, understand and, simultaneously, criticize various theoretical, methodological, and epistemological issues in those studies through some case studies.
Understanding Turkey's multicultural, linguistic, and religious structures as a legacy of the Ottoman requires a comparative, analytical, historical, and inter-disciplinary perspective. From the past to the present, there have been changes, transformations, conflicts, breaking points, fragmentation, and integrations with diverse politics in this heterogeneous social entity. This course aims to explore modern Turkish history and society from different angles and critically examine the sociological and anthropological studies that have emerged in this area. In addition, recognizing and understanding the various religious and ethnic identities of Turkish society in terms of history, identity, language, belonging, and social memory and analyzing the dynamics generating this plural structure are among the objectives of this course.
With the advent of modern nation-states after the First and Second World wars, political borders have become essential areas where existing states have exercised sovereignty. The course aims to examine the political-territorial boundaries on the axis of ethnicity, economy, memory, and imagined nation. In this approach, the theoretical framework developed by Benedict Anderson in his book Imaginary Communities will be utilized. Furthermore, it aims to analyze what kind of tools nation-states use in the process of building political borders and the forms of resistance and disruption that the local has shown against this construction process from an anthropological perspective. Finally, attention will be drawn to how politics corresponds to reality after the boundaries have been formed and how the new borders distinguish similar societies.
With an emphasis on spatial relations, the course would focus on the intertwined connections between the everyday practices of subjects, the spatial transformations, the re-constructed discourses, and the effects in which the various "cultural" forms of gender, class, race, ethnicity, and religion are experienced, conceptualized and reproduced. Rather than taking "social space" as an isolated vacuum, this course aims to show the reciprocal reproduction processes between places, spaces, subjects, bodies, affects, discourses, and "cultures" and their relations to macro strategies. The subsequent weeks explore different comparative theoretical dimensions of space and place theories emphasizing embodiment, social production, construction, effects, and discourses. To demonstrate these relations, this course primarily aims to cover ethnographic fieldwork methods at an advanced level with fieldwork excursions in which the engaged participation of the study can provide the researcher with productive research techniques and an understanding of social theories to illuminate the way they work on specific spaces and places in their projects like cities, villages, associations, institutions, gated communities, leisure places, political parties, social media, etc. Thus as a theory and method course, this seminar would provide the graduate students with the abilities of participant observation, interviewing, social mapping, and visual analysis besides the advanced theoretical framework to research specific spaces and places.
Islam is one of the most prominent religions in the history of the world. It has shaped and determined social, cultural, economic, psychological-spiritual, political, legal, and many other aspects of diverse societies in different geographies. That is why it has also captured the gaze of many social scientists, particularly sociologists and anthropologists. This course aims to scrutinize sociological and anthropological studies on Islam and Muslims with a critical perspective through some selected theoretical and ethnographic works. It is aimed to participate in the former discussions of "Anthropology of Islam" and "Islamic Anthropology" and to encourage students to deal with new epistemological, ontological, and methodological analyses and move toward new ways of critical thinking on the subject matter.
This course examines the nation-state structures and the state machine in the axis of political violence and hegemony. In this cour e, where the effort to understand the construction process of the modern state through thinkers such as Weber, Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault, and Agamben will be introduced, the thinkers such as Benjamin, Arendt, Sartre, and Fanon will be added to the archeology of how political violence turns into one of the essential tools of the modern state. It will also be emphasized how the condition manifests as an effect in everyday life; through social policies, the state exists and legitimizes itself in the minds of citizens. This course will encourage students to rethink concepts such as the modern state, political violence, sovereignty, power, and legitimacy.
Emotion(s), one of human nature's most essentialt features, has been a neglected subject until recently in social sciences and especially sociology-anthropology circles. Are emotions universal, or do they differ from culture to culture? Are emotions cultural-collective phenomena beyond their psychological-individual aspects? This course aims to analyze emotions (love, hate, joy, anger, fear, etc.) as individual and collective experiences from an anthropological perspective. In addition, during the course, the relationship between emotion and mind, how innate emotions are innate, and how socially constructed are discussed.
Starting with Edward Said's critique of the production of knowledge about the 'Orient,' this course will look at the trajectory of Orientalism, including the criticism of Said's work, exposing areas of inquiry that his volume has neglected. The second part of the course will then look at the lasting effects of specific texts written about the Middle East in particular and their use in recent and ongoing conflicts in the region. Next, certain contemporary genres, such as travel writing, will be explored to see how orientalist approaches can take new forms. Finally, texts from the East, the US, and Europe will be examined to explore how orientalist approaches can be reproduced in the East.
This course investigates multiculturalism's practice and social phenomenon through different periods and geographies and seeks to establish a genealogy of multiculturalism, particularly in Europe. It will then move on to its history with approaches of contemporary social and political theory's take on multicultural practices. The course t kes Islamic Spain as a starting point and then moves on to medieval Venice, Ottoman Empire, and modern-day London. Seeking the roots of multicultural practices of civilizations, there will be readings of foundational texts such as the Madina Charter, along with historical monographs that depict the social relations of the periods and geographies concerned. Finally, there will t en be readings of fictional texts that re-imagine the different multiculturalism that has already been studied to see what contemporary authors make of these historical experiences.
This course aims to inform students about the theoretical and methodological debates that have arisen in oral history research. Oral history is the result of verbal expressions of events, memories, and experiences in the past. Oral historians do not only investigate and analyze past events through these different narrative types; they also explore how these historical events are remembered and perceived today. In the context of historiography, this course will discuss the place and importance of oral history studies. It will also focus on how oral history has developed as a method and sub-discipline. In addition, the methodological contributions of oral history to other disciplines will be discussed, and several examples will be studied together. At the same time, document fetishism will be considered a methodological flaw, and it will be emphasized what oral history provides in this regard.
This course aims to give students advanced theoretical equipment for analyzing and understanding society, politics, authority, power, and power relations. Students in this course will have the opportunity to discuss various themes, such as state structures, the emergence of nation-states, the state's relation to other social institutions, social movements, civil society, and democracy. These discussions will be held from a historical perspective, supplemented by different examples.
This course aims to underline the relationship between experiences of religion, the state-making process, and the reproduction of secularism and modernity in Turkey. Besides the historical view of the production of state in Turkey, we will examine religion in "modern" Turkey with a sociological and anthropological perspective related to the spatial dimension. This course examines the social and political dynamics shaping the management of religions in the public sphere of Turkey. The focus will be on the intertwined relationship between modernity, nation-state building, secularism, and religion. In this relation, the question "how the "modern" Turkey constructed and experienced concerning religion?" is very crucial in terms of analyzing and illustrating the everyday practices of people within a relational perspective in which the "modern," "religious," and "secular" takes various forms in different contexts. It aims to introduce and analyze the theoretical debates, concepts, and methods put forward in this field with a critical perspective and discuss the examples from historical, anthropological, and sociological studies. Mainly, anthropological works on Turkey will be analyzed to understand the transformation in Turkey in terms of religion, modernity, and conceptualization of the state. In addition, as the practice part of the course, we will also have ethnographic fieldwork experiences in the city of Istanbul to understand the daily life practices and experiences of religion as a citizen in a "modern" state to illuminate the way the students develop their research projects and methodologies.
The course aims to examine, discuss and analyze the phenomenon of gender within the framework of theoretical debates, concepts, and theories presented in this field with a critical perspective. Human sexuality and gender will be explored in different social and cultural settings. Family and marriage systems, expectations, and norms will be investigated. The categories of gender and sexuality will be treated in an interrelated manner to understand social behavior. An anthropological approach will facilitate the discussions, and students will be encouraged to study and present real-life case studies and their impact on political and social debates.
To explore the relationship between city and society, urban sociology will be handled under the following topics: Development of towns (in general & in Turkey), classical and contemporary urban theories, the relationship between values, stratification and city, cities and urban transformation processes (through modernization, globalization, segregation, poverty, othering, etc.), urban utopias, differences between the cities in the West and Muslim world, Istanbul (from past to the day) and Istanbul Studies.
Historical, sociological research examines the long-term social processes that impact contemporary societies. It also comprises the study of many other issues such as modernization, social change, trends and effects of globalization, integration and separation, continuity and rupture, religious and cultural pluralism, and linking the global to the local. The theoretical and methodological tools necessary to understand all these issues will be introduced to students of this course.
This course deals with how language differs according to the workplace, the social environment, the purpose of communication, and social roles and identities. It examines different forms of speech and writing. Daily conver ations, interviews, interrogations, public speaking, emailing, messaging, and posts on social media can be mentioned as examples. In this cour e, the students will discuss the nature of the meaning, how the individuals convey what they say and write, the kind of courtesy in verbal communication, and what makes a text consistent. They will al o have the ability to analyze the characteristics of various texts, characterize the interpersonal stances adopted by the speaker and the author, and identify and classify different text styles that function in specific social settings.
This course aims to give students the ability to examine sociological aspects of disasters. Disasters ar natural phenomena. At the same ime, they are social events that reflect the lives of our communities and groups as much as they are born. Throughout t e term, the course attention will focus on how culture, inequality, social structure, and processes affect how people face disasters, how they respond and recover or fail, and how disasters may lead to rapid social change. Utilizing the theories of sociology of disaster, students will be able to examine the social, economic, geographical, political, and cultural factors that place people at different risk levels before, during, and after the disaster in the case of major natural disasters in our country.
What is the nation? Is there only one definition of the concept? Can nations e traced back to the beginning of history? Or are they invented? Are they ima ined or accurate? What is the relationship between secularization and nationalism? Are individualism and nationalism necessarily at odds with each other? In this course, in light of these questions, the human communities, so-called nations, and the ideology of nationalism will be deeply discussed. Then, starting from the enlightenment, after going into details of the modernization and secularization process, the relationship between these processes and the rise of nationalism will be elaborated.
Regarding theories of nationalism, the approaches to nations as deeply rooted in history and the perspectives treating them as modern phenomena will be compared and contrasted. In this regard, students will be expected to read the works of critical field scholars, namely Ernest Gellner, Ellie Kedourie, Benedict Anderson, Eric Hobsbawm, and Benedict Anderson. Lastly, the complicated and ambiguous relationship between religion and nationalism will be discussed in light of different perspectives.
This course covers major theories and approaches to colonialism and post-colonialism. It pertains to socio-political and cultural changes in the colonized world, particularly considering the regions around the Indian Ocean and East Indies. The students will comprehend the social processes occurring in various institutional domains during the colonial and post-colonial times in relevant geographies and their impacts on the current societies. Furthermore, the students are expected to acquire skills such as an analytical perspective and critical approach through a general look at the interactions between colonizers and colonized societies. In addition, the interactive/transmissive method will be implemented in the teaching-learning sessions between students and materials, students, and instructor/facilitator. And this pro ess will also be supported by the direct method. This course will lead students to acquire significant knowledge about the social changes via modernization processes in larger sectors in societies throughout the colonial period and nation-state establishment. Students' performance will be appraised through classroom activities including individual presentations, and written assignments. Finally, stu ents will have the capacity and capability to conduct research and write academic articles in particular domains.
It is designed for students to comprehend the dynamic processes of the region in conceptual and empirical ways, achieve a contextual and theoretical understanding of Southeast Asian societies, and compare the historical and cultural connectivity of the region within the geographical context of the Indian Ocean and China Sea. This course ims for the students to explore the dynamic processes of the region in conceptual and empirical ways. Throughout t e methodological and theoretical issues, the students are expected to have a contextual and theoretical understanding of Southeast Asian societies and their cultures embedded with the Indian and Chinese spheres. The subject will also open the doors to understanding both the region's historical and contemporary developmental stages. Concerning t is, the civilizational processes of various societies will be dealt with in a comparative approach.
This course aims to study and discuss religions as a social institution. Using the possibilities of historical sociology, it will be discussed whether there are meaningful relationships between the emergence of religions and some social factors. By drawing a tention to the time and place dominated by various religions, the relations between these religions and their nature and context will be tried to be understood. In addition, the birth, spread, institutionalization of religions throughout history, the different institutional abilities of religions and their relations with other social institutions, the possibilities and limits of these differences, the position of religions in the process of modernization, the process of religions in the context of secularism of modernity will constitute the main discussion axis of this course.
This course aims to address social movements from a sociological perspective. First, key c ncepts, theoretical approaches, and methodological tools will be discussed through many case studies. To what exte t theories about social movements explain modern societies and in which parts they are missing will be addressed. Special attention will be given to the following topics throughout the course: Democracy, religion, identity, globalization, civil rights, environmentalism, class, race, and ethnicity. While social movements in Turkey are more intensely covered, the other major social activities worldwide will also be the subject of the course.
This course aims to analyze, understand and make sense of the common basic transformations that societies have undergone since the 1970s. Theories regarding the origins of modernity, different reflections of enlightenment thought, discussions of modernism and modernity, globalization, post-industrial society, postmodernism, and postmodernity will be discussed through their reflections in daily life. In addition, paradigm changes between modernity and postmodernity will be discussed. Finally, the axis that shifts from certainty to uncertainty, from knowability to obscurity, from positivism to agnosticism will be handled within the framework of the concepts of modernity – postmodernity.
The course will primarily focus on the epistemological, ontological, and methodological assumptions behind the various research approaches. The main aim of this course is to provide students with information about paradigms developed on the nature of research in social studies. We will focu on the ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches of various methodological approaches in social sciences, mostly under the surface. The course h s both theoretical and practical purposes. The theoreti al aim is to give students information about the state of knowledge and the possibility of obtaining information through different research paradigms. During the c urse we will read and discuss the case studies intensely and ask the following basic theoretical question: Can we understand the social world? If yes how? he question "how" brings us to our practical purpose: to learn how to conduct scientific research.
This course will first discuss why Southeast Asian societies and cultures can be evaluated sociologically as one unit. Then, within the framework of this assumption, we will focus on the common social dynamics that cut across different cultural, national, and social structures in the region and are valid in all these different elements. On the other hand, in this great totality, we will draw attention to the sociological differences between various nations, tribes, and cultures. Topics such s power relations, ethnic identity transitions and transformations, violence, crime, and local manifestations of the state and global religions will be discussed with a comparative perspective throughout the course.
This course is a particular subject that deals with current debates in sociology. Topics may include discussions and new trends in the discipline in general or maybe more specifically related to sub-disciplines in the discipline.
The course of the sociology of literature emphasizes the close relationship between two subjects. The general im of the course is to study literary works produced in distinct societies to comprehend the social conditions in each social reality. Since litera y works are considered creations built upon certain social phenomena differentiated in time and space, they are helpful for sociological studies. In this rega d, studying literature reveals close attention to the socio-economic and political situations around an apparent weltanschauung. Literature, in its style and form, also reflects the social change.
This course aims to focus on the forms and contents of social inequalities. Especially t e inequalities which are based on gender, class, race, and ethnicity will be deeply analyzed. In this context, classical and contemporary sociological theories of stratification, types, and regimes of stratification, indicators of stratification, new forms of stratification/inequality, inequality in the world and Turkey, and similar topics will be handled in this course.
This course will deeply focus on articulating work and labor within the social structure. Beyond understanding labor and work only on an economic basis, this course will underline the different meanings and ways of labor within different contexts. This course s crucial to examine the conceptualization of labor and work within different spaces which are described as private and public like the workplace and household. The question "how labor and work are related to the micro-level experiences, understanding of self and identity, and family structure?" and "how they are intertwined with other social institutions, social structures, and social processes?" will be answered through the discussions of social inequality, discrimination, exclusion, and power relations. By discussing the diverse approaches to labor and work, we will theoretically tackle the dimensions of race, ethnicity, gender, and social class.
soc@ihu.edu.tr