BARIS CAYLI messina, PhD
A Social and Cultural CritiC
Books and Volumes
ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE AND CATASTROPHE: HOW GLOBAL INSECURITIES THREATEN THE FUTURE OF HUMANITY. Berlin and Boston: De Gruyter, 2023.
From violent military conflicts and anthropogenic climate change to weapons of mass destruction, our lives and the planet are undergoing a tumultuous transition. Environmental Injustice and Catastrophe meticulously explores key global security issues that pose severe threats to the future of humanity and the planet. The book takes an integrated, multidisciplinary, and global approach to determine the actors whose actions create catastrophic risks and dire consequences. The authors, who have backgrounds in sociology, political science, history, cultural studies, film studies, law, art, and anthropology, highlight the profound environmental and security threats we face today. Environmental Injustice and Catastrophe provides a detailed account on an extensive array of topics, including nuclear energy risks, waste management, space pollution, military conflicts and environmental security in African’s Sahel region, the power competition over the Arctic, literary and film critics on security and environmental threats, and the role of art in manifesting future catastrophic risks. This distinctive, timely, and conceptually rigorous book combines a rich body of research. Environmental Injustice and Catastrophe is a valuable source for sociologists, political scientists, historians, critical theorists, and all those who care about our future and environment.
BANDITS, BRIGANDS, AND MILITANTS: THE HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY OF OUTLAWS (Editor, 2021)
Journal of Historical Sociology
Bandits, brigands, and militants have been popular and disputable figures in global history. States outlawed these formidable men and women through pejorative words and legal measures while many state authorities used them for their political ends from time to time. Some outlaws became admired authorities and heroes in their own villages and towns whereas in other places their heroism was equivalent to oppression. Their brutal killing by their nemesis did not prevent their existence in ballads and literature. Both positive and negative aspirations concerning bandits, brigands, and militants have shaped their multi-layered identities in society throughout history. These unyielding figures invoke a number of concepts such as hope and fear; injustice and dissent; resistance and power, wherever they flourish. Many outlaws in historical sociology and their engagement with multiple actors rendered them transformative actors of social change. They became the messengers of people by articulating their demands and making their dissent visible in the public space. Covering a vast geography and a long time period, this special issue offers a new venture for studying outlaws from a fresh epistemological position to advance our knowledge in sociological theory within the conundrum of societal dilemmas.
THE CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY OF PROTEST AGAINST PERCEIVED INJUSTICE (Editor, 2020)
Cultural activities in a social setting offer a common ground to conceive complex power dynamics. Culture has been a place of escape throughout history for dissident people who were oppressed and marginalised by a social system that created injustice for them. The cultural anthropology of protest against perceived injustice exposes the powerful actors who create injustice and demonstrates how people demonstrate their reactions through different instruments in the cultural spectrum. The identification of agencies that perpetrate injustice from the perspective of vulnerable people clarifies the quandaries of a confrontation in a contested location.However, the articles in this special issue show that this confrontation also needs to be read by centralising the people who are subject to the injustice that forms and shapes different cultural forms at the same time. The cultural forms examined in this special issue indicate that powerful authorities are not indestructible, and the layers of resistance have complex patterns as much as the structures of authorities do.
VIOLENCE AND MILITANTS: FROM OTTOMAN REBELLIONS TO JIHADIST ORGANIZATIONS
Montreal, Kingston, London, Chicago: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2019.
"A serious-minded and sophisticated treatment of a controversial and significant subject."
Richard English, Queen's University Belfast and author of Does Terrorism Work?: A History
"Violence and Militants is an insightful analysis focused on a key question: How do violent organizations and groups justify their use of violence in different times and places? In this empirically rich study Baris Cayli explores how structural and cultural violence operate in premodern and contemporary social contexts. Homing in on the behaviour of rebels and state authorities in the Ottoman world as well as violent organizations of today, this book offers a novel interpretation of the social processes involved in the rationalization and use of violence.”
Siniša Maleševic, University College Dublin and author of The Rise of Organised Brutality: A Historical Sociology of Violence
"Violence and Militants offers the reader an exciting journey to uncover the ravages of catastrophe."
Jeffrey Ian Ross, University of Baltimore and author of Political Terrorism: An Interdisciplinary Approach
"Cayli’s analytical, comparative, and moderate approach invites readers to engage in an intellectual dialogue over group manifestations of violence, rationalized in the name of ideological goals. The points raised are thought-provoking - not entertainment or distraction. Questions asked as well as answered generate new inquiries and new insights.”
A. Ezel Kural Shaw, co-author of The History of Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey
Finalist of Montaigne Medal by Eric Hoffer Award Committee
Reviewed by: Canadian Journal of Political Science, Kirkus Reviews, US Reviews, San Francisco Book Reviews, and others.