RATIONALE

Contemporary reality is one of rapid, expanding, and diverse global flows of objects, technology, information, money, images, ideologies, and people. These flows increase interactions and heterogeneity, change social relations and communities, and reshape identities and boundaries. In a globalizing world, it is crucial to understand the ambiguous complexity that arises from the nexus of these rapid flows and dynamics.

Within this nexus, societies are becoming more and more transitional, to varying degrees and forms. Present-day transitional societies are uniquely at once the expression of and catalyst for contemporary globalization processes. The transitions we experience are economic and political as well as sociocultural and technological. The imperatives of marketization, privatization, and liberalization coincide with the development of multicultural/multi-ethnic societies created by urbanization and immigration. To grasp the complex dynamics that characterize transitional societies, it is necessary to study the relationship between the global, regional, and local dimensions and manifestations of social, economic, political, and cultural processes and conditions.

Turkey, a place of rapid transition, is an interesting and opportune location for scholars studying transition. Turkey’s place in the world, its cultural characteristics, the recent and current transformations, as well as the experience of the sizeable expatriate population of Turks provides rich material and ground for addressing and reconsidering important issues in many disciplines: politics, business, economics, sociology, anthropology, demography, and cultural studies, to name a few. A research environment situated in the midst of this transitional society encourages new questions and insights and prompt innovative research and theories about social change.