The idea of labour in the Ottoman periodicals during the modernization process (1862-1922)

Labour is a phenomenon that has played an important role in the construction of the modern West. Gradually changing approaches on labour in the 15th and 16th centuries had an impact on the modern capitalist production organization, as well as business organization formation. Labour, which has played a leading role in the formation of people-centered humanist thought, comprises the importance in the human-centered interpretations of the human-God, human-human, and human nature relations in European thinking. The modernity process, which has the image of the rational human at its center, has resulted in continued secularization and the objectification of nature. Modernization, which was an effort aimed at conveying and using Western technology in the Ottoman Empire, affected a large area in the form of impacting the Empire's economic, social, and intellectual world by exceeding this framework. This process brought together changes in the social and intellectual areas by transforming Ottoman economic life within the framework of the organizational requirements of modern capitalist production. The process, which was expressed in different ways like modernization, civilization, and industrialization, had an impact on cultural areas in particular, beyond conveying technology. This thesis, wherein the discussions and perspectives conducted within the framework of the concept of labour (sa'y u amel) in Ottoman thought during modernization, will comparatively discuss the conception of labour. The traces of the concept of labour in the world of Ottoman thought will attempt to be driven forth based on the role that labour in the modern West has played in the construction of intellectual and social fields. This study, which covers magazines published during the modernization process (1862-1922), can state that the conception of labour, which changed the Ottoman world of thought in the transformation of the economic and social areas, undertook a significant role. Various demeanours developed against modernization in the process of restructuring the Ottoman intellectual world's concept of benefit are seen to have essentially had modern reflexes. In this study, which essays the concept of labour in the world of Ottoman thought in terms of different intellectual trends, Islamists can interestingly be said to have had modernist reflexes almost as much as the liberals and socialists.