Emergent distinctions in the juridical field: the case of ''plaza attorneys'' in Turkey

Official URL: http://risc01.sabanciuniv.edu/record=b1606879 (Table of Contents)

Based on an ethnographic research drawing on in-depth interviews with attorneys working in the field of international business law in Istanbul, Turkey, this thesis examines how the macro-level changes that are brought about by the transformation and restructuring of the juridical field in Turkey are articulated at the micro-level, in the lives and careers of these attorneys. Departing from the colloquial expression of a plaza attorney, I explore the different types of cultural capital which have enabled them to build their careers in the field of international business law and investigate the links between their professional and political identities. In doing so, this thesis aims at providing an insight to the emergent fractures in the historically constituted unitary image of attorneys in Turkey. Utilizing Bourdieu’s conceptualization of the juridical, this thesis discusses the way in which the ‘newly emerging’ conceptions of professional identity challenge the ‘conventional’ understandings of attorneyship in Turkey and the existing professional hierarchies and introduce new ones.