Conclusion

This chapter summarizes the main arguments of the book based on the paradigm shifts in the ethnographic discourses on women and Islam in Turkey. A major outcome of these shifts is the emergence of an ethnographic discourse that counters Orientalism; this has caused the production of knowledge to cluster around research questions and issues that address the relationship between women and Islam—primarily in relation to the different phases of Islamist movements. This study argues that this clustering, which indicates the points at which social conflict and power struggles have taken place in relation to the tensions between secularism and Islamism, also reflects the political nature of knowledge production by revealing the researchers’ standpoints based on what they exclude from their research and the truths they circulate in the academic discourse. The gaps and clusters in the literature also indicate the multiple layers of institutional power acting on academic research, rendering some research subjects preferable, attractive or timely. These discourses have been formative in our perceptions of pious Muslim women and the relationship between gender and Islam in Turkey.