Anthropology Runs into 1968: Ethnography of Turkey during the Cold War
The project investigates Cold War entanglements in the discipline of anthropology through a case study of University of Chicago anthropologists working on Turkey in the 1960s and early 1970s. Drawing on unpublished correspondence and manuscripts in the university archives and on oral history interviews, it brings to light the life and work of Professor Lloyd A. Fallers and his graduate students. It examines why Turkey turned into an ethnographic destination during the Cold War and how its appeal faded away in the 1970s through analyzing multi-sited experience of translocal actors, predominantly American and Turkish scholars. Methodologically, it aims to create a dialogue between literatures on Cold War social sciences and those on biographical turn and life history, hence producing an intimate account of a world-historical transformation in social science academy during the 1968 movements. During his research stay, Ali will write his monographic book tentatively entitled Anthropology Runs into 1968: Ethnography of Turkey during the Cold War that will tell the transregionally intertwined story of Turkish social science academy and Chicago’s anthropology department, of political upheaval in Turkish and American campuses, and of the construction of Cold War culture on both sides of the Atlantic.