Kentteki İslami akademik seçkinler: 1970–2010 arasında İstanbul'da akademik sermayenin dönüşümü ve aktarımı

This thesis aims to explain the accumulation of Islamic academic capital in Istanbul between the 1970s and 2010s. Based on semi-structured in-depth interviews with 19 Islamic individuals, I analyzed the structure of the social space of Turkey that gave rise to the increased visibility of Islamic individuals in the academic field. By focusing on both macro and micro levels, I paid attention to the structure of the Islamic urban academic elite habitus to explain the factors that motivate young Islamic individuals to pursue academic career. In order to have a comprehensive perspective, first I utilized Bourdieusian social theory to explain the main axes of social conflicts in Turkey. By underlining the centrality of symbolic struggles in social conflicts, I revealed how Islamic movements mobilize people from different social classes by referring to Islam. The perspective enabled me to explain the role of academic capital in acquiring legitimacy in the symbolic field. Based on this framework, I presented the eight most referred motivations behind Islamic youth's interest in academic activity. By introducing gender and class differences in analysis, I aimed to cover different aspects that influence agents' perceptions about the academic field. Based on the findings of the fieldwork, I claimed the social space of Turkey is built upon two axes: cultural/economic capital and symbolic capital. Due to the decrease in professional human resources in the late Ottoman era, the new republic introduced education policies to involve more people in higher education. These policies resulted in the rise of a new professional class that has not embraced the secular norms of the republic. The coalition of the new elites with the culturally and economically marginalized population led to a dual structure in the Islamic movements in Turkey. Although the demands, habits, and strategies of these two compounds have been diverse, Islamic symbolic language united them against the hegemony of Kemalist elites in the symbolic field. This phenomenon led to misinterpretation of Islamic movements as anti-systemic by attributing the demands of the lower classes to the whole movement. Although economically and culturally deprived segments of society seek to challenge the rules of the fields that they are excluded from, upper-class individuals with religious tendencies aimed to increase the value of their symbolic capital to reach better positions in the field of power. Due to the principles of Islam that undermine class differences, the diverse demands of the two groups became blended. Since Islamism is built upon the alliance against the symbolic hegemony of republican elites, academia is one of the fields that Islamic agents perceived as a site of struggle. In order to acquire the right to articulate legitimate categories of vision and division, Islamic habitus instrumentalized academic production. Nevertheless, the changes in the structure of symbolic space gave rise to the individualization of the political meaning of academic activity. The findings of the research showed how young agents have hybrid motivations to pursue academic career. Keywords: Academic capital, cultural capital, field of education, field of academy, Islamic elites, Islamic movements, Islamic habitus, Islamic youth, Islamism, Turkey.