Circumcision and Medicine in Modern Turkey

Circumcision and Medicine in Modern Turkey is a rich ethnography that moves beyond the conventional geographical scope of the sociology and anthropology of Turkey. Oyman Başaran skillfully crafts a historical narrative around the 'ideal' types of itinerate and scientific circumcisers, then deconstructs these ideal types by showing how practitioners in each camp deal with different kinds of ambivalences structuring their occupational identities, social roles, and self-representations as they mimic the other. Additionally, his focus on masculinity and the medicalization of the male body brings a fresh perspective to gender and medicalization debates.

— Salih Can Açiksöz, author of Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey

Circumcision and Medicine in Modern Turkey closely examines the experiences of twenty-five cities and their outlying towns across Turkey. By analyzing the changing characteristics of the medical actors, Başaran offers an alternate approach to the study of what is a central part of the Turkish male experience.

— Bowdoin

Sociologist Başaran (Bowdoin College) uses the seemingly mundane topic of male circumcision as a point of entry into a very well-integrated historical and ethnographic examination of modernization, medicine, religion, family, rural-to-urban migration, economics, and municipal and state politics in Turkey. . . . Highly insightful and illuminating.

— CHOICE