“I vote, therefore I am:” Rituals of Democracy and the Turkish Chief Rabbi

Abstract

This article describes how the election and investiture of a chief rabbi in 2002 created a unique space for Turkish Jews to debate the meaning of democracy. I document current Turkish Jewish discourses about democracy by combining ethnographic observations of the election season with an analysis of the production and reception of local narratives (speeches, news articles, and interviews) about the process. I then analyze the election and inauguration as a “politics of presence” in which democracy is seen not only as a practice through which to debate ideas but a discursive move to represent collective difference in the public sphere. As such, this article contributes to discussions about the performative nature of minority politics and how these alternative discursive spheres relate to the broader contexts in which they occur.

More than the Second Amendment: Liberal gun owners, citizenship, and emancipatory democracy in the United States

“…Democracy here is thus not merely equated with its political institutions (Paley 2004, p. 503) but with how those institutions account for the public that brings them into being. Where Brink‐Danan, in her analysis of Turkish rituals of democracy, argues that citizens contend, “I vote, therefore I am” (2009), liberal gun owners would add, “I protest, therefore I am.” They fashioned the responsibilities of citizenship by urging citizens to vote to foreclose upon tyranny, and to engage in a politics of protest, not merely to express their right to free speech but to develop a more expansive space of public politics, advocating for an emancipatory democracy in which lawmakers consider public protests in the making of policy. Their engagement with politics then becomes meaningful in the sense that their voices are paid attention to and figure in policy making rather than merely being tallied.…”

Special issue: electoral fraud and manipulation in India and Pakistan

“…Firstly, the anthropological literature tends to analyse elections in terms of their ritual, sacred, and carnavalesque dimensions (Banerjee, 2007;Brink-Danan, 2009;Coles, 2004;Lazar, 2004), but tends not to pay detailed attention to conflict and violence. Secondly, scholars have focused on the role of clientelistic inducements during elections.…”

A ritual of integration: Power, elections and cultural reconstruction among Mexican migrants in New Zealand

“…Political anthropologists have argued in favor of conceptualizing elections as an important site of self-definition for participants of the ritual (Brink-Danan, 2009; Herzog, 1987). From this perspective, beyond the traditional meanings associated with the act of voting, electoral participation can help individuals and their communities to send messages such as presence (Brink-Danan, 2009), belonging (Baringhorst, 2001) and integration (Baumann, 1992). This is particularly important in the case of ethnic groups that have been traditionally seen as ‘less prompt’ to embrace democratic values and behaviors and have thus been affected by discourses of exclusion.…”