Ibn Haldun University Department of Sociology MA Program aims to build a basis for a new understanding and research ground for analyzing and providing solutions to people and society in the world and our country. With this infrastructure, the Sociology Doctorate Program aims to train academic staff who can work more deeply on these issues and produce alternative analyses and solution suggestions with the perspective of open civilization, intellectual independence, and rooted revivalism. Fed by different methodological and theoretical approaches, the Sociology Doctorate Program places great emphasis on the ability of academic staff to reflect original theories and methods in academic publications and research.
As a requirement of Ibn Haldun University's notion of being a research university, the Sociology Doctorate Program claims to create a ground for the training of internationally competent sociologists and researchers. Furthermore, in line with our university's vision and multilingualism policy, this program will make it possible to develop an academic perspective beyond the dominant sociological traditions, able to produce alternative research and offer solutions in our country and worldwide.
Thanks to its linguistic qualifications and following the internationalization quality, Ibn Haldun University's Sociology Doctorate Program prioritizes conducting research and developing solutions that address various social issues in societies in different geographies, both nationally and internationally. In this context, our program aims to identify the relevant institutions in the light of academic data, determine bilateral and multiple relations, and present alternative scientific data about these processes while developing the country's relations with different geographies and opening up to foreign countries with an interdisciplinary approach.
Prof. Ramazan Aras
The knowledge and skills to be gained by the graduates of the program, worthy of the Ph.D. degree in Sociology English, can be listed as follows:
This course, which aims to encourage students to make inquiries and analyses on sociological and ethnographic theory, thoughts, and methods through their research projects, is given without credit. This course, which helps students draw a road map for themselves in research projects, is also aimed at discussing the processes of preparing, executing, and writing a sociological and ethnographic project. This course aims to create an efficient discussion environment where draft, preliminary, field experiences, or main frameworks of the projects carried out or to be carried out are mutually shared.
The primary purpose of this course is to provide students with advanced knowledge about the methods and techniques of scientific research and to develop them as applications. In a study to be carried out using the Scientific Research Method, topics such as what to do, how to follow, how to determine the problem, how to concretize the purpose, how to choose the correct research method, how to develop test materials, how to cite references, and how to discuss the findings will be covered. In addition, quantitative and qualitative research methods will be discussed in-depth, and students will be provided with the necessary equipment for advanced practices and discussions about research methods before, during, and after fieldwork. Analysis of various articles on the development of research methodology will be discussed separately. Publication Ethics, Education and Ethics, Ethical Justification, and Basis are other topics to be covered.
This course aims to examine sociology's roots, starting from the thinkers raised by the Islamic world until the beginning of the 20th century. In this context, in-depth readings and analyzes will be made on the theories of thinkers such as al-Farabi, Ibn Khaldun, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, August Comte, Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, Vilfredo Pareto, Max Weber, Ferdinand Tönnies, Franz Boas, Levi Strauss, and Georg Simmel. It will be underlined that these theories have continued to influence sociological thought since the beginning of the 20th century. This course aims to direct students to make in-depth critical examinations and discussions on the concepts and ideas of these thinkers, anthropologists, and sociologists. A comparative approach will be taken throughout the course.
This course aims to deal with 20th and 21st-century sociological thought. By placing the theories in the scheme of micro, medium, and macro views, and between functionalist/confrontational ideas and naturalistic/humanistic approaches, in-depth reading and analysis of the theories of sociologists such as Talcott Parsons, Robert K. Merton, Ralf Dahrendorf, Lewis Coser, Erving Goffman, Herbert Blumer, Peter Berger, Howard Becker, C. W. Mills, Anthony Giddens, Michel Foucault, Pierre Bourdieu, Jean Baudrillard, and Zygmunt Bauman will be conducted. This course aims to recognize, interpret and criticize the current theories put forward by different thinkers and social scientists with the claim of analyzing and offering solutions to various problems faced by other societies in the modern period. Post-modern, post-structuralist, colonial, post-colonial, and post-Marxist theories that have emerged recently are among the topics of this course. Globalization, orientalism-occidentalism, ecological problems, political violence, changing and transforming social classes and structures, neo-colonial politics, a new search for sovereignty and politics, and the crises that modern nation-states are struggling with will be discussed with different theoretical approaches. Students will be expected to apply these academic discussions to current problems.
This course analyzes Ibn Khaldun's theories and methods as an example of applied multiplexity at the ontological, epistemological, and methodological levels. Applied multiplexity is first explored through a review of Ibn Khaldun's works—ranging from history to fiqh and tasawwuf—at the conceptual and practical levels. This will be complemented by analyzing his followers as representatives of multiplexity in the past and today. In academia, there is a great debate about what Ibn Khaldun's legacy means today. Is he merely a great historical figure of a bygone era, or are his ideas still relevant to understanding the current social problems? This course will discuss applied Khaldunism by presenting examples of Ibn Khaldun's usages and misusages by the Ottoman and contemporary scholars in the East and West. It will then explore how we can today correctly understand and apply Ibn Khaldun's multiplex theoretical approach to the current social, economic, religious, educational, and political issues.
A wide range of research and studies have been put forward by different social scientists on Muslim societies and groups from the past to the present, and this production is still ongoing. This course aims to read, understand and criticize various theoretical and ethnographic studies as well as theoretical and methodological aspects. Many anthropological issues will be handled comparatively, from the idea of saving Muslim women throughout the course to Muslim consumers in globalizing markets, from social and economic modernization in the remote towns of Indonesia to the way of living Islam in Morocco.
This course aims to study modern Turkey's history and society and sociological-anthropological studies of different aspects that have emerged in this area to deal with a critical eye. Women’s issues in Turkewomen'sit manifest in other parts of the public life state, kinship relations in the Kurdish tribes, and various social problems, such as arabesque music culture, will be discussed from an ethnographic perspective. In addition, this course aims to recognize, examine and understand the different religious and ethnic identities created by Turkish society around the axis of history, identity, language, belonging, and social memory and to analyze the dynamics that make this pluralistic structure.
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 aim of this course will 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 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, one of the world's most essential religions, has shaped and continues to affect social, cultural, economic, psychological-spiritual, political, legal, and many other aspects of various societies in different geographies. This course aims to participate in the “Anthropology of Islam” and “Islamic Anthropology” "discussions and to ma"e new epistemological, ontological, and methodological analyses and inferences by analyzing the sociological and anthropological studies on Islam and Muslims with an analytical perspective. In the course, theoretical studies of Talal Asad on the Anthropology of Islam will be centered, and case studies such as Clifford Geertz’s studies on MorGeertz's Indonesia will be discussed within this theoretical basis. Especially the mistakes that western academics have made while examining Islamic societies, and the prejudices they have become will be among the course's main topics. Tcourse'sicism will be based on the views put forward by Said in Orientalism.
This course examines the nation-state structures and the state machine in the axis of political violence and hegemony. In this course, 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 essential natures, has been a neglected subject until recently in social sciences, 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 Said'stion of knowledge about the ‘Orient,’ this course will look at the trajectory of Orientalism, including the criticism of Said’s work, exposing Said's 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, 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 multi-theory practices. The course takes Islamic Spain as a starting point, 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. There will then 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 histories are 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 provide students with advanced theoretical equipment for analyzing and understanding society, politics, authority, power, and power relations. In this course, topics such as state and state structures, the birth of nation-states, the state's relationship, the state's social institutions, state and social classes, state and social movements, civil society, and democracy will be discussed with examples from a historical perspective. In addition, the issues such as the effect of various social dynamics on voter behavior and general characteristics of the social bases of political parties will be covered throughout the course, and students will be expected to approach these issues from a theoretical perspective.
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 an" experience concerning faith?” 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 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.
This course, as expectedly, sits at the intersection of two disciplines of social science, namely, History and Sociology, and it aims to integrate historical analysis as a critical dimension of sociological inquiry. This perspective will be reflected in various social science questions during the course. Although, on the one hand, students will be introduced to the works of prominent scholars of the field, such as Theda Skocpol, Peter Evans, and Michael Mann, more contemporary and critical accounts will also be discussed. Another objective of the course will be to demonstrate the novelty and modernity of concepts such as nation and nation-state by elaborating on their historical roots. Last, the emergence and gradual predomination of capitalism as an all-encompassing economic system worldwide will be at the center of the class discussion. As a social and political reaction to capitalism, the rise of the working class and the social movements based on social discontent will also be discussed.
This course deals with how language differs according to the study area, social environment, communication purpose, and social roles and identities. It examines different forms of the functioning of speech and writing. Daily addresses, interviews, inquiries, public speaking, emailing, messaging, and articles on social media can be mentioned as examples. In this course, students will discuss meaning, how individuals convey more than what they say and write, the role of courtesy in oral communication, and what makes a text consistent. During the course, different speeches and readers will be analyzed, especially in line with the theoretical framework of French thinker Michel Foucault. In addition, students will learn to analyze the characteristics of various texts, characterize interpersonal postures adopted by the speaker and author, and identify and classify different styles of text that operate in specific social settings. Finally, how the meaning can be manipulated with implicit expressions in the language and the role of this manipulation in power relations will be discussed in depth.
This course aims to give students the ability to examine sociological aspects of disasters. Disasters are natural phenomena. At the same time, they are social events that reflect the lives of our communities and groups as much as they are born. Throughout the 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 the 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 countries be traced back to the beginning of history? Or are they invented? Are they imagined or real? 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, 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 significant 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 analytical and critical skills 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 process 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 of societies throughout the colonial period and nation-state establishment—students’ performance wStudents'praised through classroom activities, including individual presentations and written assignments. Finally, students 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 area within the geographical context of the Indian Ocean and China Sea. This course aims for the students to explore the dynamic processes of the region in conceptual and empirical ways. Throughout the 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 the region's historical and regional developmental stages. Concerning this, the civilizational processes of various societies will be dealt with in a comparative approach.
This course aims to study and discuss religion as a social institution. Using the possibilities of historical sociology, it will be addressed whether there are meaningful relationships between the emergence of beliefs and some social factors. By drawing attention 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, and institutionalization of beliefs 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 central discussion axis of this course.
This course aims to address social movements from a sociological perspective. First, key concepts, theoretical approaches, and methodological tools will be discussed through many case studies. To what extent 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 fundamental 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 reviews in daily life. In addition, paradigm changes between modernity and postmodernity will be addressed. Finally, the axis that shifts from certainty to uncertainty, from knowability to obscurity, and 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 focus on the ontological, epistemological, and methodological approaches of various methodological techniques in social sciences, mainly under the surface. The course has both theoretical and practical purposes. The theoretical aim is to give students information about the state of knowledge and the possibility of obtaining information through different research paradigms. During the course, we will read and discuss the case studies intensely and ask the following fundamental theoretical question: Can we understand the social world? If yes, how? The question “how” brings us to our "radical 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 typical 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 wondrous totality, we will draw attention to the sociological differences between various nations, tribes, and cultures. Topics such as 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 field.
The course of the sociology of literature emphasizes the close relationship between two subjects. The course aims to study literary works produced in distinct societies to comprehend the social conditions in each social reality. Since literary works are considered creations built upon certain social phenomena differentiated in time and space, they are helpful for sociological studies. In this regard, studying literature reveals close attention to the socio-economic and political situations around an apparent weltanschauung. Moreover, as observed in its style and form, literature reflects the social change.
This course aims to focus on the forms and contents of social inequalities. Primarily, the imbalances 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 intensely 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 is crucial to examine the conceptualization of labor and work within other spaces described as private and public, like the workplace and household. The question “how labor and work are"related to micro-level experiences, understanding of self and identity, and family structure?” and “how are they 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.
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