History of Children's Play in Turkey in the Context of Urban Development

Bengi Sullu, The Graduate Center, CUNY

This paper explores children's places in the context of urban development in Turkey in the 20th and 21st century, in the backdrop of national and local policy contexts addressing social and built environments. Building on the research from the Western industrialized world addressing the specialized and segregated educational, residential and leisure environments created for children that gain prominence over the course of 20th century particularly for those belonging to middle to upper classes (Hart 2002), this paper attempts to understand how the historical shifts surrounding the notions of and practices around childhood, mainly the changing social value of children as discussed by Zelizer (1994), are demonstrated, adapted, diversified, negated in the urban context of Turkey, from the foundation of the Republic to five-year National Development Plans to the neoliberal agenda post-1980s. The focus of analysis is how national, local and public media narratives in documents portray who the child is, mainly in relation to children's place in the social, environmental, economic context of the cities.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 249. Urban