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The Greek debt crisis (2009–2018) was an event that received unprecedented media attention worldwide. The media reproduced a highly negative image of Greece, addressing the crisis in exceptionalist terms, usually under a moralistic and culturalist explanatory framework. Drawing on earlier research, this chapter focusses on the culturalist discourses developed by popular Greek mainstream news media, of conservative and liberal political orientation, such as Kathimerini, Athens Voice and Protagon.gr. Through what is understood as a ‘self-orientalising’ process, such media tend to reproduce the neo-orientalist hegemonic crisis and austerity discursive construction, as enunciated by the EU's political and economic establishment. Under this lens, austerity emerges as a modernising project that would presumably correct Greece's irregularities and would make Greece European and economically competitive for global capitalism. The period studied concerns the years of the crisis between 2010 and 2015. The analysis discloses the classist underpinnings of such discursive repertoires and their antipolitical and antidemocratic character. The analysis also discusses the disciplinary effects of such media practices, which mystify austerity and the processes of expropriation it unfolds, and passivises civic culture, and counterhegemonic resistances, by promoting a collective ‘self-bashing’ strategy.

When it comes to the analysis of markets, difference has been described as a tool for competition and for carving out specific target groups. Once it is taken as factual, the significance of difference for market processes is undoubted. Taking a practice theoretical perspective at the market for Islamic fashion in Berlin, this paper explores what comes before. It intends to investigate not only the effects of difference but also its performance. Investigating how difference is accomplished by entrepreneurs as active agents of the market will also shed light on the societal surroundings of the market and the ways in which it is embedded in its sociocultural and discursive environment, hence highlighting the significance of its context for economic action, and vice versa.

The consumer behaviour literature is evolving towards the assumption that products are inherently experiential bundles, and after all, all businesses are operating within the experienced economy. Experiences are much more advantageous for the consumers because they advance happiness or enjoyment of life (instead of survival or maintenance). Experiential purchases lead to greater happiness levels compared to material purchases. Reliance on materialism and material purchases is shown to be the reason of low happiness levels in even the most affluent countries.

In this chapter, based on theoretical as well as empirical papers, I analyse experiences and the consumption of experiences in the Turkish context. The arguments are supported by up-to-date market analysis of related industries conducted by independent market research agencies. The first section looks at the rise of experientialism in retail industries, such as in the case of shopping malls. The following sections touch upon main experiential categories such as tourism, dining and sports. Finally, the social aspects of experiences are discussed in the context of third-place experiences, and some empirical findings are presented. The chapter concludes with some recommendations for practitioners, experience designers, service providers as well as researchers.

Cultural heritage destruction, acts that are carried out by both state and non-state actors, have accompanied violence towards people in all types of wars throughout human history. Used as a means to cause terror and to directly perpetuate harm on a particular group of people, heritage destruction ultimately erases the history of the people and denies them a future at the same time. Heritage destruction, as such, is a topic that is directly relevant for conflict and peace economics. Yet, economics literature on heritage destruction, especially during epochs of violence is scant at best. Presenting some examples of heritage destruction during mass atrocities, this chapter discusses how heritage destruction is related to causes, conduct, and consequences of violence. Doing so illustrates how heritage destruction could be incorporated in extant conflict and peace economics studies and their relevance for post-conflict reconstruction and violence prevention.

The purpose of this chapter is to discuss the impact of asymmetric warfare on the military profession within the context of the Ottoman period. These effects are categorized with strategic, structural, and behavioral dimensions. The Ottoman military had been a part of many unconventional/asymmetric conflicts during the Ottoman era. These experiences are showing clearly that classical officer training system is not providing necessary knowledge to command units under this type of atmosphere.

The historical event analysis is used for the methodological purpose.

First finding is that asymmetry of method, technology; morale, norms, and organization were observable during the Ottoman collapse period. Second, the reactions to the asymmetric threats were conventional at first sight. Third, the solutions were found by the officers individually not through systemic attempts and they were the results of lessons learned from personal faults. In this chapter, the Ottoman period and military was considered with the viewpoints of recent definitions of asymmetric warfare.

The traditional postcolonial focus on the modern and the European, and pre-modern and non-European empires has marginalized the study of empires like the Ottoman Empire whose temporal reign traversed the modern and pre-modern eras, and its geographical land mass covered parts of Eastern Europe, the Balkans, Asia Minor, the Arabian Peninsula, and North Africa. Here, I first place the three postcolonial corollaries of the prioritization of contemporary inequality, the determination of its historical origins, and the target of its eventual elimination in conversation with the Ottoman Empire. I then discuss and articulate the two ensuing criticisms concerning the role of Islam and the fluidity of identities in states and societies. I argue that epistemologically, postcolonial studies criticize the European representations of Islam, but do not take the next step of generating alternate knowledge by engaging in empirical studies of Islamic empires like the Ottoman Empire. Ontologically, postcolonial studies draw strict official and unofficial lines between the European colonizer and the non-European colonized, yet such a clear-cut divide does not hold in the case of the Ottoman Empire where the lines were much more nuanced and identities much more fluid. Still, I argue that contemporary studies on the Ottoman Empire productively intersect with the postcolonial approach in three research areas: the exploration of the agency of imperial subjects; the deconstruction of the imperial center; and the articulation of bases of imperial domination other than the conventional European “rule of colonial difference” strictly predicated on race. I conclude with a call for an analysis of Ottoman postcoloniality in comparison to others such as the German, Austro-Hungarian, Russian, Persian, Chinese, Mughal, and Japanese that negotiated modernity in a similar manner with the explicit intent to generate knowledge not influenced by the Western European historical experience.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.