CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2025
| Author | Ciyit, Hazal |
|---|---|
| Title | The Heart of The World: Women Negotiating the Gendered Public Spaces of Istanbul`s Grand Bazaar |
| Summary | This thesis explores the social and political effects of Istanbul`s gendered public spaces on women in Turkey. More specifically, the thesis aims to unearth how gendered characteristics of the Grand Bazaar, a historical trading center situated at the heart of Istanbul, having crucial social and political preponderance for Istanbul, affect women`s inclusion and exclusion from this space as shop-owners and workers. Drawing upon Doreen Massey`s (1994) conceptualization of the politicization of space, Young`s(2005) frameworks of feminine bodily existence in public space, Michel de Certau`s(1984) concepts of strategies and tactics, Sara Ahmed`s (2010) frameworks of causality between objects and happiness, and Saba Mahmood`s (2001) conceptualizations of docile agency, this thesis endeavors to uncover women`s strategies for negotiating the gendered space of the Grand Bazaar as customers, craftspeople, and manufacturers. The thesis explores how women experience exclusion and inclusion in the Bazaar and how they develop tactics to circumvent the patriarchal heteronormative gendered public space of the Bazaar. The research for the thesis relies on thirteen semi-structured oral history interviews conducted with women and men who work in the Bazaar, in addition to ethnographic observations of the bustling environment of the Bazaar. This thesis aims to shed light on what kinds of difficulties women workers experience in the Bazaar and what kinds of tactics they adopt to be visible, social, and political agents in the Grand Bazaar. |
| Supervisor | Gailani, Nadia-Jones |
| Department | Gender Studies MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2025/ciyit_hazal.pdf |
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