Think About It
Featured Image of Women and National Identity in Türkiye’s Public Urban History: The Case of Ankara City
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Hacer Elmacı
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) founded the new, secular Republic of Türkiye in 1923. Among the most important initiatives of the Kemalist national program in the early years of the Republic was the construction of the new capital, Ankara. During these formative years, a massive architectural urbanization and modernism program was implemented, visually distancing the nascent Republic from its recent past (Değirmenci, 2022). The history and story of the newly established nation-state have been transmitted from generation to generation through different elements of public history, such as museums, monuments, and statues on the streets. In this context, this paper investigates how women belonging to the Turkish nation have been represented from past to present and how this gendered national identity is constructed through representations in the example of Ankara City. The data of this study, which is based on qualitative research methodology, consists of sculptures, monuments, and museums in Ankara. The data is analyzed through content analysis and social semiotic analysis. As a result of the study, it was observed that women were depicted within the framework of traditional roles such as motherhood and wifehood and as active fighters in the Turkish War of Independence, a significant and empowering role in Turkish history. It was also found that womanhood was associated with pride, dignity, determination, freedom, and cultural development. It is also understood that a particular emphasis was placed on women's role in nation-building and constructing the modern Turkish nation through representation through elements of public history.
Philosophy of Social Cognition
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Jevgenija Sivoronova,
Aleksejs Vorobjovs
Today’s interdisciplinary context is rich in approaches to social cognition. Social cognition focuses on how individuals cognize reality, which is inherently seen as social, with cognition primarily understood as communication and interaction. Scientific perspectives on social cognition offer different frameworks, such as social cognitive, informational processing, constructivist, and phenomenological approaches. This proposal discusses these approaches and their conceptual emphasis. Then, we argue for the holistic emergence approach or the cognition system to theorize about social cognition. This approach emphasizes the importance of having an ideal image of cognition when considering it. First, we acknowledge the need to consider ontological, epistemological and methodological foundations to understand cognition. Implementing these philosophical disciplines is crucial for developing a concept or theory of cognition having fundamental bases that describe the creation of abstract designs of processes, actions, interactions, agents, objects, and systems of knowledge that mediate cognition occurrences in various contexts and positions. Second, through this holistic approach, we propose to conceive, speculate, comprehend, and explore social cognition and its elements. Third, we also refer to theoretical-methodological modelling that provides a new perspective on social cognition phenomena. The model is not purely abstract; it can also take on a concrete form, making it a hypothetical perfect or optimal model. We emphasize the need to continually return to the idea of cognition, as thinking about it is a fundamental aspect of cognition itself. We hold this model as a mental backing that helps us think about any cognition-related matter.
Where Science Meets Culture: Symbolic Umwelten and the Politics of Non-Coincidence
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Jovana Isevski
In his Theoretical Biology, Jakob Johann von Uexküll proposed a theory of Umwelt, suggesting that organisms can experience the world only subjectively, as their perceptions are shaped by the unique qualities of their physiological makeup. I extend Uexküll’s observations to argue that in humans, Umwelt obtains a qualitative multiplication as stimuli get filtered both through their sensory-motor systems and neurally encoded symbolic memories or “engrams.” A conglomeration of engrams, shaped by cultural, social, and individual experiences, gives rise to identities/symbolic Umwelten—e.g., seeing the world as a woman, a musician, a Native, or a Muslim. What interests me is how the desire for symbolic self-preservation operates under physiological mechanisms similar to those driving biological survival. Because the brain does not automatically distinguish between “reality” and “simulation,” our bodies react as if our biological selves are in danger even when our symbolic lives are under threat. Biology, thus, tricks us into believing that our being is identical to our symbolic Umwelten. A radical expression of this dynamic is necropolitics—the belief that symbolic survival requires eliminating others (e.g., the Israel-Gaza conflict or the destruction of Indigenous peoples). While symbolic identification is vital for navigating political and everyday lives, I propose a “politics of noncoincidence,” an approach that does not reject symbolic Umwelten but seeks to decouple existence from the need to fully embody socially prescribed identities. By loosening rigid attachments to symbolic selves, we can acknowledge the multiplicity of human experiences and foster different modes of cohabitation without resorting to violence.
