Abstract
In Turkey, the meaning of Ramadan has seen changes since the start of the new millennium. In the AK (Justice and Development) Party’s power, conservatism in both public and private spheres has started to become more visible. The time of secular political power is waning; religion—and all kinds of religious activities—are no longer ‘the other’. This chapter is placed at the intersection of several subfields of sociology (e.g., sociology of religion, of leisure and of celebration). ‘Symbolic interactionism’ is the basic theoretical perspective, which is well suited to helping our understanding of the fluid relationships between religions and social structures, and between religions and cultural change, as well as shedding light on the personal transformations experienced by individuals moving between religious systems of meaning. In addition to this theoretical perspective, the arguments and concepts of Victor Turner, namely, festivals and liminality, are used to explain the process of construction of identity at a personal level. In this chapter, Ramadan is accepted as ‘a story telling narrative’, since it helps people connect to their past, specifically to their own childhood.
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Odabas, Z.Y., Attar, G.E. (2018). Celebratıon of Ramadan: The Case of Turkey. In: Beniwal, A., Jain, R., Spracklen, K. (eds) Global Leisure and the Struggle for a Better World. Leisure Studies in a Global Era. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70975-8_4
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