Kirca, Süheyla (2000) Popularizing feminism : a comparative case study of British and Turkish women's magazines. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

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Abstract

This thesis is a comparative study of popularisation of feminism in Britain and
Turkey in the 1990s. It focuses on selected British and Turkish women's magazines
and examines the ways in which they engage with feminist concerns.
The methodology is derived from feminist critical theory and cultural studies in order
to address the dynamic interchange between feminist politics and mainstream or
consumer women's interests and to examine the relationship between the concepts of
feminism and femininity in contemporary women's magazines. The significance of
the research lies in the identification of ways in which these texts incorporate and
appropriate feminist discourses to the extent that the notion of femininity has
increasingly come to be associated with feminist thought. The argument presented in
this study is that the relationship between the producers of cultural texts and
feminism, and producers and readers need to be taken into consideration to
investigate how gendered subjectivities are reproduced in any given culture or crossculturally,
by whom they are reproduced, in whose interests they work, and how they
are constructed. This approach to popular culture will provide tools to articulate the
political and cultural identities of women.
The thesis is divided into three chapters. In the first, I discuss the evolution of
feminist movements in the different historical and cultural contexts of Britain and
Turkey by focusing on current feminist debates. The second chapter examines the
women's magazine as a diverse form of popular culture with regard to its market and
content. Contemporary women's magazine markets in these two countries and the
ways in which these markets have been changed and expanded in conjunction with
the development of feminist movements over the last two decades are discussed. This
chapter also discusses the role of editors in defining a contemporary understanding of
femininity for mass consumption and the editorial control of the magazine form as a
commodity. The final chapter examines the dominant themes through which these
texts have engaged with feminist issues. By comparing and contrasting the Turkish
and British women's magazines I have found that specific conditions and politics
engender a variety of diverse forms for the popularisation of feminism. Feminist
themes and issues embedded in popular and commercial discourses are complex and
various. However, I have found that the Turkish women's magazines primarily
provide an outlet for women's voices and share a common goal with feminist politics
of promoting female empowerment in the context of 1990s' Turkey. On the other
hand, feminism is predominantly recognized as a cultural value by the British
women's magazines in which feminism is often redefined through commodities and
fetishized into a symbol of things. Their approach is defined as postfeminist which
means the incorporation, revision and depoliticisation of feminist politics.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Feminism -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century, Feminism -- Turkey -- History -- 20th century, British periodicals, Turkish periodicals, Feminism in literature
Official Date:	June 2000
Dates:	Date Event June 2000 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Centre for Translation and Comparative Cultural Studies
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Collie, Joanne ; Gilmore, John, 1956-
Extent:	305 leaves
Language:	eng

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