Turkish family narratives: The relationships between mothers- and daughters-in-law

Journal of Family History

Volumn 32, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 161-178

  Yakali Çamoǧlu, Dikmen ^a  

^a DOGUS UNIVERSITY   (Turkey)

Author keywords

Daughters in law; Family narratives; Mothers in law; Narrative identity; Turkish families

Indexed keywords

EID: 34047161400     PISSN: 03631990     EISSN: 15525473     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0363199006297508     Document Type: Review

References (32)

1. Similar kinds of prejudice about interfering mothers-in-law exist in English society as well. See Sybil Wolfram, In-laws and Outlaws: Kinship and Marriage in England (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987);
2. Pamela Cotterill, Friendly Relations? Mothers and Their Daughters-in-Law (London: Taylor and Francis, 1994).
3. Example of the proverb: "Kaynana öcü, oǧlu cici" ("Her mother-in-law is a dragon, but her husband is an angel"). This saying suggests that a daughter-in-law loves her husband but considers his mother as a disturbing creature.
4. Kaynana: mother-in-law; dili: her tongue, her language.
5. Alan Duben and Cem Behar, Istanbul Households (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
6. Deniz Kandiyoti, "Kadinlarda Psiko-Sosyal Deǧişim: Kuşaklar Arasinda Bir Karşjilastirma," in Türk Toplumunda Kadm, ed. Nermin Abadan-Unat (Ankara: Çaǧ Matbaasi, 1979), 115.
7. These household types are taken from Peter Laslett and Richard Wall, eds. Household and Family in Past Time (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972). However, I agree with Rosemary O'Day in The Family and Family Relationships, 1500-1900: England, France and the United States of America (London: Macmillan, 1994) when she argues that these types exclude single-person or single-parent households, as they all have at least one conjugal unit. Therefore, they also exclude many Turkish households of the time since many were left without a conjugal unit as a result of wars.
8. Guy Widdershoven, "The Story of Life: Hermeneutic Perspectives on the Relationship between Narrative and Life History," in The Narrative Study of Lives, Volume I, eds. Ruthellen Josselson and Amia Lieblich Josselson (London: Sage, 1993), 2.
9. Ibid., 7.
10. Dikmen Yakali Çamoǧlu, "Turkish Women in the Family in the Early Republican Period" (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, The University of Birmingham-UK, 2004).
11. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality: the Will to Knowledge (London: Penguin, 1978);
12. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (New York: Vintage, 1979);
13. Michel Foucault, "Afterword by Michel Foucault: The Subject and Power," in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, eds. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982).
14. Pierre Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital" in Education: Culture, Economy, and Society, eds. Albert H. Halsey, Hugh Lauder, Phillip Brown and Amy Stuart Wells (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997);
15. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinctions: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London: Routledge, 2002).
16. I have also identified and analyzed six novels written by authors of the period: Muazzez Tahsin Berkand, Mualla (Istanbul: Doǧan Kitapçilik, [1941] 2002);
17. Muazzez Tahsin Berkand, Bülbül Yuvasi (Istanbul: Doǧan Kitapçilik [1943]2002);
18. Suat Derviş, Aksaray'dan bir Perihan (Istanbul: Oǧlak Yayinlari, [1963-1964] 1997);
19. Reşat Nuri Güntekin, Yaprak Dökümü (Istanbul: Inkilap, [1930] 1999);
20. Nahit Sirri Örik, Kiskanmak (İstanbul: Oǧlak Yayinlari, [1946] 1994);
21. Ercümend Ekrem Talu, Sabir Efendinin Gelini. (İstanbul: Gayret Kitabevi, ([1922] 1939).
22. I have also analyzed an autobiography: İrfan Orga, Portrait of a Turkish Family (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950). I do not intend to include their analysis in this article because of the limitations of space. However, it must be noted that the results of the analysis were, most of the time, parallel to the analysis of the interviews.
23. As explained and quoted in Hilary Graham, "Surveying through Stories" in Social Researching: Politics, Problems, Practice, eds. Colin Bell and Helen Roberts (London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1984), 109.
24. See Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982).
25. Also see Fatema Mernissi, Beyond the Veil: Male-Female Dynamics in a Modern Society (Cambridge, MA: Schenkman Publishing Company, 1975).
26. Elaine H. Baruch, Women, Love and Power (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 2
27. Ibid., 6.
28. Ibid., 2.
29. See Dreyfus and Rabinow.
30. Cotterill Friendly Relations? Mothers and Their Daughters-in-Law, 77.
31. Ibid.
32. Bourdieu, "The Forms of Capital" in Distinctions: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste.