The sociocultural and economic meaning of sacred time in conservative middle classes

The dissertation study focuses on the institutional dimension of the sacred time through the Presidency of Religious Affairs, and on the social dimension specific to the conservative middle classes. Five different qualitative techniques were used in the study that was designed according to the grounded theory construction pattern. Content analysis and observations were utilised for the institutional dimension of the sacred time. In this sense, khutbas, Religious calendar and sermons produced by the Presidency of Religious Affairs were taken as data. For the social dimension of the sacred time, fieldwork was carried out in the months of Recep, Saban and Ramadan, which are known as the three months among the public. Based on this, seven observations were executed. In addition, a focus group meeting was held for the preparation of diary and in-depth interview questionnaires. Finally, over the three months period, 14 volunteer participants filled in the diaries given to them; In-depth interviews were conducted with 16 volunteer participitants. After the data collected from the field were coded in a qualitative data analysis program and analyzed subsequently, the theoretical structure of the sacred time was presented. In this sense, it has been discovered that there is a religious, sociocultural, economic and political meaning in the institutional dimension of the sacred time; and a religious, sociocultural, economic, political and psychological meaning in the sociological dimension. The Theory of Medcezir in Sacred Time has been developed to cover the institutional and social meaning of the sacred time. Sacred time, which moves cyclically in weekly and annual terms, has a religious, sociocultural, economic, political and psychological content both in institutional and social dimensions. There were unforeseen findings that were not anticipated at the beginning but were reached during the thesis research process which were the advantages of the grounded theory structuring pattern. The two different theoretical frameworks were drawn as a result, in the institutional dimension of the sacred time, namely Emanet Toplum Tasavvuru and Medinetü'l Emane. Finally, since the period in which the thesis was written coincided with the coronavirus epidemic that was effective at national and global level, it was seen that there was a relationship between sacred time and corona time, and as a result of the analysis, a final conceptual framework called Coronatopia was created.