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Purpose – Turkey has undergone a major market transformation during the recent decades. This chapter seeks to explore the role of religious politics in some Turkish informal workers' pro-capitalistic change of heart as a response to that transformation.

Methodology/approach – The study is based on participant observation and interviews in a squatter district in Istanbul, Sultanbeyli. This is a two-phase ethnography, consisting of first-hand observations first during 2000–2002, and then in 2006. The fieldnotes are supplemented by 90 interviews.

Findings – Islamic mobilization eases the transformation of habitus in a liberalizing society and the transition from the predominance of social capital to the predominance of economic capital. I contend that the sub-proletariat's dispositions depend on (urban as well as national) historical context and articulation to political and religious movements.

Originality/value of paper – I discuss Bourdieu's study of the transition from subsistence-driven economies to market economies. The chapter points out that Bourdieu's approach to the problem of transition is more satisfactory in comparison to modernization theory and resistance studies. However, I will show that the problems Bourdieu identifies in Kabylia and Béarn (such as “fatalism of despair”) are less salient in Istanbul because of a sociopolitical movement (Islamism) that garners consent among the sub-proletarians by using religion as a disciplining force.

Purpose – This concluding essay suggests how contemporary developments in cultural sociology can enrich and extend the American sociology of work. While recent studies in the sociology of work consider more fully the role of sense making and representations in workers’ lives, we propose additional possibilities for conceptual and theoretical cross-pollination. We propose questions that a cultural sociologist might ask about European workers in the age of neo-liberalism.

Methodology/approach – We examine how authors in this volume and its companion (Brady, 2011), and other students of workers approach culture-related phenomena. In particular we focus on how they use culture as explanans and explananda. Borrowing from Lamont and Small (2008) and Small, Harding, and Lamont (2010), we present a set of analytical tools that cultural sociologists use widely. We then draw from culturally focused studies of workers to illustrate how researchers have used these concepts.

Findings – Research on European workers documents important political and economic trends that affect this group, but it examines less frequently how individuals understand, experience, and respond to these changes. With tools from cultural sociology, we can explore these understudied aspects of the conditions and lives of European workers.

Originality/value of paper – To our knowledge, this is the first systematic discussion of how concepts from contemporary cultural sociology can enrich research on European workers.

Street economy is the presentation of commercial, artistic goods, and services in streets, sidewalks, squares, public spaces, and other open spaces, without being bound to a fixed place, by standing or walking. Although there are not many written studies on the street economy and the issue has started to come to the agenda yet, it has made it difficult to provide sources in this field. One of the examples of a micro entrepreneurship in which we encounter in everyday life often comes from street vendors. As micro entrepreneurs, their having having social rights and security is an important issue both for Turkey and also the world. In this context, the purpose of the study is to determine the level of behaviour and attitudes of the citizens living in Amasya and Bursa provinces against – the street economy – the workforce space where society witnesses one-on-one. Research within itself includes the examination of written documents, observation, and interview methods. The information obtained was evaluated based on the questionnaire. Document scanning, survey study and data collection, interviews with street vendors, and citizens living in the provinces were conducted in Turkish and English between 2016 and 2020. The study included 79 people in total, 59.5% from Amasya and 40.5% from Bursa. The obtained data as a result of the research were evaluated through the SPSS statistical program, the findings obtained were interpreted through tables, the results of the two provinces were compared, and various suggestions were made.

Over the years Latin American countries have had to endure harsh right wing dictatorships bent on preserving the status quo, while presumably “protecting” them from left wing totalitarianism until they became “ready” for democracy. In Argentina, a democratic civilian government became possible in 1983, after the collapse of the most ruthless military regime the country had known. And, on July 8th 1989, for the first time in sixty years, a democratically elected president succeeded another elected president from a different political party. I was in the country at the time and lived through the chaotic weeks that followed; I talked with people, read the papers and tried to decipher the new political discourse.

Many child‐focused civil society organisations (CSOs) working in Africa, Asia and South America have shifted from organising their work around children's needs to promoting their rights. The rights‐based frameworks they use are informed by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. This article explores the value of global rights. Ethnographic studies about the lives of young people and their transition into adulthood point to diversity of ideas about childhood in different parts of the world, raising questions about whether the idea of universal child rights can accommodate such varied worldviews. Yet CSOs have often failed to take account of this diversity in the way they use rights frameworks. Research by anthropologists about children in three situations ‐ at work, on the move and facing violence ‐ is used here to reveal the problems caused if rights frameworks are used without sufficient understanding of context and complexity.