Stanford University Press Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism

While Islamic politics pose a challenge to capitalism in some parts of the world, they have actually advanced capitalism and democracy in Turkey. This work looks closely at this transition in Turkey, and examines why this shift has not taken place in Egypt and Iran. Review Cihan Tuğal's Passive Revolution provides a rich and detailed account of the transformations of the Islamist movement in Turkey over the last three decades. It presents a sophisticated and original conceptual framework that guides the analysis of these transformations... Passive Revolution is an excellent contribution to the study of counterhegemonic projects and the alternative paths they follow. It brings the study of radicalization and deradicalization of Islamist activism into the broader eld of political sociology and demonstrates the unique contributions that critical ethnographic methods make to the study of politics.--Salwa Ismail "University of London, American Journal of Sociology" Tuğal has thus written an ambitious study that seeks to reconstruct the theoretical understanding of Islamism ... Highly recommended.--A. Paczynska Tuğal's fresh look at the shifting relations between radical and mainstream Islamists, Kurds, and rigid secularists in Turkey provides an alternative look at Islamic politics. Undertaken at the right time and in the right place, this nuanced account of the multi-faceted struggles of the absorption of radical Islamists into the capitalist system will definitely lead to exciting, constructive debates.--Berna Turam With breathtaking access to religious activists--even some revolutionaries--and demonstrations of how the now-dominant party mobilized the urban poor on behalf of a neo-liberal, capitalist project, Tuğal accomplishes a rare feat. Nobody will mistake this with any other work on contemporary Islamic movements.--Charles Kurzman "University of North Carolina" About the Author Cihan Tuğal is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley.