Re -Imagining Istanbul: Globalization and Urban Change

This study is situated in and seeks to contribute to an expanding body of literature on globalization and cities, and more specifically to the global city theory and research. These studies have drawn attention to the growing significance of particular cities as sites of globalization through which an emerging global system of production, exchange, finance, telecommunications, culture, and politics is socially and spatially articulated. They have also documented how global forces shape the urban processes and politics in these cities. This dissertation contributes to this existing literature in two ways. First, by studying global city making as a process, it brings forth the significance of wider historical context for the actions and imaginaries of social actors, and the construction of Istanbul as a global city. Second, it throws light on the agency of the local and national actors, who are not simply reacting to global forces but also are actively engaging in the politics of globalization and global city making by devising strategies, policies and discourses, and seeking alliances at multiple scales. These two dimensions of my study advance an analysis of globalization not as a state but as an ongoing process shaped by the interactions of manifold actors and practices in a context that extends from past to present and from local to global. In so doing, this dissertation also challenges conceptualizations of globalization as a monolithic top-down process imposed by global forces. Instead it shows how globalization is embedded in local identities and interests, and shaped and advanced by local actors within the context of intense transnationality.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Sociology

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Genis, Serife

Contributors dc:contributor

• Jan Nederveen Pieterse

• Sociology, General

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI3153299

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86205