Conservative Women on the Axis of Conspicuous Consumption, Class, Religion and Empowerment / Gösterişçi Tüketim, Sınıf, Din ve Güçlenme Ekseninde Muhafazakâr Kadınlar

• Main Authors: Gökçe Çöçel*, Pınar Melis Yelsalı Parmaksız**
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Cyprus International University 2021-05-01
• Series: Folklor/Edebiyat
• Subjects: conspicuous consumption; islam; conservative women; patriarchal bargain; public patriarchy
• Online Access: https://www.folkloredebiyat.org/Makaleler/1170513362_2-muhafazkar%20%20kad%c4%b1nlar%20melis.pdf
• ISSN: 1300-7491; 1300-7491

This article focuses on the practices of conspicuous consumption of the uppermiddle-class conservative women living in Gaziantep and aims to understand the transformation of the class, conservatism, and the women’s experiences through women’s encounters in daily life and furthermore, discusses the possibility for women’s empowerment. The data was collected through a qualitative field study by using a feminist methodology. The fieldwork took place in Gaziantep in a 6-month-period from March to September in 2019 and consists of 14 individual interviews, 27 in-depth interviews and two distinct focus groups with a total number of 14 participants. All interviews focus on the daily lives and personal experiences of the conservative/religious women who participated in the research. Research data was analysed through interpretation of the themes which emerged from the data. As a result, the empowerment of the upper-middle-class conservative women was explained through the concepts of the patriarchal bargain - a term that is coined by Deniz Kandiyoti, to refer to strategies employed by women within a system of concrete patriarchal constraints and the move from private to public patriarchy, which points out to changing forms of women’s domination within different social systems as explained by Sylvia Walby.