Culture and Capital: New Religionist Middle Classes and Their Changing Cultural Forms within the Context of Class Transformation of Islamic Groups in Turkey

Conceptual tools like culture and capital is two of concepts that are used to study any social fact or event. In Turkey, one of these groups, often discussed and analyzed as a social fact, is Islamic-inclined groups or/and communities. To begin with, by concept of capital we should state that what we mean is forms of economic-based capital if we consider Bourdieu mentions from forms of a few capitals. These Islamist groups have had increasingly a the growing accumulation of capital and religionist new middle classes, who try to increase and form these economic-based capital within many distinct sectorial areas like  textile, clothing or food industry, and  construction  in Turkey. Such form of capital is pointed out to have formed new cultural forms, emerging more in consumption and fashion, except for ones of cultural capitals like education, academy, and media in Bourdieuian sense. However, what we imply by new cultural forms is mostly consumption and fashion-focused cultural forms. These groups are conservative in values but avant-garde in consumption practice. For instance, having been created style of clothing known as Tessettür, the fashion of veiling is one of first practices of consumption produced in rich Islamic groups. There would be unavoidably some magazines such Âlâ Dergisi, which advance and created the fashion of clothing in accordance with Islamic principles. Apart from clothing, new spheres of consumption are constituted by islamicising a great deal of areas of urban life like hotel, restaurant, and café and so on. Wealthy classes within these groups have luxury hotels to have their holiday. Caprice hotel is one of them, which is designed for these classes to go. In sum, we will study these Islamist groups’ consumption-focused new cultural forms by taking emergence of new religionist middle classes and capital accumulation in these Islamist groups into account.