The privatization of culture and the development of cultural centers in Turkey in the post-1980s

Abstract

This thesis seeks to uncover the privatization of culture in the post-1980s in the context of social and economic transformations. To achieve this aim, it compares, what motivated rich families and corporations to make investments beside business between and after 1980s. The motivations of their philanthropic activities beyond the 1980s are explored in relation with the import substitution industrialization model of this period. The reasons for the transformation of their investments to the cultural sphere with the change of social life are put forward as the basic unit of analysis. After conceptualizing this transformation within the theoretical framework, the thesis focuses on the cultural institutions opened in the post-1980s and discusses issues such as westernization, the classed based structure of art, and the global city fantasy in the basis of the discourse analysis of the interviews made with the actors of the institutions. This thesis mainly takes culture and art institutions and the discourses of the related actors to the center.