CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2011
| Author | Ulker, Riza Baris |
|---|---|
| Title | TAKING CARE OF ONESELF AND OTHERS: ETHNIC ENTREPRENEURS IN BERLIN |
| Summary | The dissertation examines what is concealed and revealed with the concept of “ethnic entrepreneurship” in Berlin, relying on the practices of “immigrants” from Turkey. It aims to explain how we got to the point, in which this way of doing business, i.e. “ethnic entrepreneurship” in Berlin, became capable of being discussed and regarded as a fundamental part of entrepreneurship. What is at stake is the discontinuity - acceptance of “ethnic entrepreneurship” - rather than trying to fit this singular event into a “natural flow of history”. This does not mean that it sets up chance over plans or principles in the interpretation of history. Rather, it intends to demonstrate that it was not self-evident that “ethnic entrepreneurship” as such had been accepted, defined and still has been discussed as a fundamental part of entrepreneurship. Hence, I look at the conditions of possibility by seeking out once again the links, which at a particular moment shape the self-evident. Deriving from these goals, the dissertation falls into two parts. In the first part (genealogical), I concentrate on the historical features of “ethnic entrepreneurship” and examine conditions of possibility in Berlin under the context of Germany and its regional and global relatedness through the rationalities and imaginations of policy makers, experts and intellectuals. In the second part (anthropological), I explore first, the ways individuals perform themselves as “ethnic entrepreneurs”; second, rules for this way doing things; and third, truth claims (as sphere where true and false can be carried out) for providing reasons about this way of doing things. Within this structure, the contribution of this dissertation can be drawn from its objective: to challenge the binary opposition that emerges through the ways of thinking about “ethnic entrepreneurship”. This binary opposition is between the pre-given or essentialist understanding of culture and the “welcoming” understanding of diverse cultural co-existence. The former, associating a space with a pre-given identity and considering its existence as natural, underlines particular ways of doing businesses by “ethnic entrepreneurs”. The latter, acknowledging socially embeddedness of these economic agents in laws, institutions and social networks, “welcomes” their richness, potential and competence in doing business with the concepts like “transcultural”, “multicultural” and “cosmopolitan”. As a result of this relation, one enters a domain, where conflicting true and false discourses can be produced and re-produced in a continuous manner through exclusive (the former) and inclusive (the latter) formulations of culture. It is this binary opposition that I aim to challenge, since both of these approaches function as mechanisms of othering. By pursuing this goal, the dissertation illustrates how human beings have been turned into subjects, i.e. “ethnic entrepreneurs”. |
| Supervisor | Caglar, Ayse; Rajaram, Prem Kumar |
| Department | Sociology PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2011/sphulr01.pdf |
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