Description
Book SynopsisAn investigation of how the expansion of modern medicine in Turkey transformed young boys’ experiences of circumcision.
In Turkey, circumcision is viewed as both a religious obligation and a rite of passage for young boys, as communities celebrate the ritual through gatherings, gifts, and special outfits. Yet the procedure is a potentially painful and traumatic ordeal. With the expansion of modern medicine, the social position of sünnetçi (male circumcisers) became subject to the institutional arrangements of Turkey’s evolving health care and welfare system. In the transition from traditional itinerant circumcisers to low-ranking health officers in the 1960s and hospital doctors in the 1990s, the medicalization of male circumcision has become entangled with state formation, market fetishism, and class inequalities.
Based on Oyman Basaran’s extensive ethnographic and historical research, Circumcision and Medicine in M
Trade Review
Circumcision and Medicine in Modern Turkey closely examines the experiences of twenty-five cities and their outlying towns across Turkey. By analyzing the changing characteristics of the medical actors, Başaran offers an alternate approach to the study of what is a central part of the Turkish male experience. * Bowdoin *
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Prologue
- Introduction: Sünnetçi, Pain, and Medicine
- 1. Itinerant Circumcisers
- 2. Fenni Sünnetçi
- 3. Mass Circumcision
- 4. Fear of Circumcison
- 5. “Deceitful Child” and “Bad Parents”
- Conclusion: The Ethics and Politics of Male Circumcision
- Appendix: Research Methodology
- Notes
- References
- Index
