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This PhD thesis attempts to make sense of Istanbul's leisure consumption and entertainment from within a historical sociological perspective simultaneously learning from Braudel's longue durée and from Rath & Kloosterman's "embeddedness" of actors & processes. From Byzantine carnivals, via Ottoman meyhâne as well as early Republican ballroom dances, up until 1970s gazino and pavyon and finally towards 2010s chic roof-top terraces with chillout-electronica in "Istanbul the Global City" or the "Cool Metropolis"; this book aims to connect the consumers to the producers and the cultural mediators to the governmental (as well as non-governmental) regulators of entertainment and leisure consumption. It also identifies the mechanisms of socio-cultural and ethnic diversity as among the main parameters of the workings of these various actors within highly complex processes.

Media and security sector oversights: limits and potentials

Burning a candle: religion and the transformation of the urban space in Istanbul

Civil society and security sector oversight: Limits and potentials

The power of water In this article, the authors evaluate the growing importance of water and the so-called "water wars" especially in light of the 5th World Water Forum organized in Istanbul, Turkey. For Turkey and its surrounding region, water has long been a source for geostrategic power, a maker and breaker of peace, as well as an important socio-economic developmental lever. The authors also concentrate on the ways in which water has recently become an arena for neoliberal economic policies and a way to further weaken public economies.

Starting from the literature on ethnic neighbourhoods as places of leisure and consumption in old immigration countries, the chapter analyzes the case of “Lazzaretto”, a multiethnic neighbourhood of Milan. Despite the presence of some pre-conditions highlighted by both theoretical and empirical studies, the transformation of Lazzaretto into an attractive ethnic neighbourhood is hindered by some political and cultural factors. Thanks to some in-depth interviews to local politicians and entrepreneurs we show the crucial role played by a general anti-immigrant climate, by local government’ lack of commitment towards multiculturalism and by some institutional constraints on the blossoming of immigrant businesses.