Puériculture and the Medicalization of the Child and Curriculum in Turkey

• In Event: Genealogy and the Production of Subjects Across Cultural and Disciplinary Contexts

Abstract

In this chapter, I trace the emergence of biopolitics in Turkey in the social and mental hygiene policies and pedagogical projects carried out in the first three decades of the Republic (1920s to 1950s). I try to see how the social and individual were simultaneously medicalized and how such medicalization was translated to the field of education and national curricular practices. My concern is with this historical system of relations, and the overall claim of this chapter is that modern identity is only intelligible when such historical system of relations is exposed.

Author

• Yasin Tunc, University of Wisconsin - Madison