Bali, Rıfat N. Tarz-ı Hayat'tan Life Style'a: Yeni Seçkinler, Yeni Mekanlar, Yeni Yaşamlar. İstanbul: İletişim, 2002, 376pp.
ABSTRACT
From the Traditional Way of Living to Modern Life Style: The New Elites, the New Places, the New Lives
Tarz-ı Hayat'tan Life Style'a: Yeni Seçkinler, Yeni Mekanlar, Yeni Yaşamlar
Since the early 1980s, the social structure of Turkey has experienced transformation at many levels. Tarz-ı Hayat'tan Life Style'a mainly focuses on one of the major aspects: the domination of the so-called “Western way of life” in an “urbanised society”. This book, in other words, discusses the drastic social transformation (1980-1990s) by emphasising the cultural changes generated by urbanisation in detail.
Rıfat N. Bali examines the salient appearances of transmutation in the cities' daily life; for example, the redefinition of “a modern man” or “a modern women” and the image building around the ‘new’ businessman or politician. He analyses the emergence of various forms of lifestyles, including alterations in eating habits.
The author's main arguments focus on the transformation process which affects young, urban, well-educated people who earn high incomes and have become the elite in the media. These are the so-called ‘White Turks' who have produced articles about the Western way of life and the European and nationalist ‘New Turk' projects.
One of the weak points of the study is its broad subject matter, which is difficult to cover properly within 376 pages. Although the author refers to many kinds of cultural transformations in urban society, he does not take into consideration the previous sociological researches on the subject. The strength of the book is, however, its comprehensive and meticulous study of the country's newspapers and other print media archives of the period 1980-2000. Moreover, it could be said that Bali's work is one of the few significant studies conducted on the cultural aspects of urbanisation covering the transformation of journalism.
Sinan Kadir Çelik
