This is summary of my PhD, 7 years long journey, 3 years of participatory observation, 1 year of research and 6 months of writing all condensed in one page/slide.
I keep on going back to this slide and populate it according to the focus in my presentations as the levels and scales in both x, y axis are valid, as well as the disparity between rhetoric and practice. Through the concepts or their labelling do change according to trends/buzz words..
Summary of My PhD Thesis called Isomorphism in Cultural Policies: The case of Istanbul District Municipalities and Cultural Centres
The impact of the neoliberal waves besieging the world and Turkey spread out to the cultural sector as of 1990s. The transformations taking place in various segments of the cultural field along the axes of marketisation, democratization and professionalization processes have also instigated discrepancies in cultural policy discourse and practice on the national, urban and local levels.
As a result of the parallel rise of private capital’s interest in the cultural sector and the government’s introduction of changes and new provisions in cultural policy, culture has become privatized, new actors and collaborations have emerged in the culture supply, public culture institutions have become corporate managements. As an outcome of “good governance” and “new public administration” strategies espoused by the nation-state in the context of democratization, the state institutions’ management and administration approach is being revised according to criteria of “effectiveness, productivity and transparency” so called professionalization.
Starting out with an exploration of district municipalities’ cultural policies and activities at their particular cultural centers, this thesis proceeds to investigate culture policies and implementation on the urban level via the İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality, and on the national level through the Justice and Development Party to propose that there is a “world culture” operating and becoming established through processes of democratizations, marketisation and professionalization under the influence of globalization and neoliberalism, and that the case of isomorphism of district municipality cultural centers is an offshoot of this situation. Through which mechanisms this particular form of isomorphism is instituted is another contribution of this study.