Mapping Popular Music Studies in Turkey Onto Studies in the Anglophone World

This paper tries to map studies in Turkey onto studies in the Anglophone world. First, we briefly discuss the historical differences between studies based on shift from the sociology of arabesk in Turkey and the sociology of rock in Anglophone popular music studies to the sociology of popular music. Then, we mainly focus on similarities by a critical look toward a parallel shift in theoretical premises from various Marxisms to postmodern theories, gradually from the 1990s onwards. We try to argue that such a shift corresponds to a discernable lack of critical discourse on the destructive results of neoliberal political, economical and cultural policies in popular music studies. Neo-Ottomanism as the new official ideology of Turkey has been applied for the neoliberal transformation and Islamization of society, for more than a decade. However, popular music practices neither supporting this process nor resisting it could hardly find their place within studies. Similarly, studies in the Anglophone world have also been far from its past critical discourses in a certain degree which could be regarded as a point of convergence between studies in Turkey and the Anglophone world.