Caglar Keyder is Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University and at Bogazici University in Istanbul. He has written extensively on economic history, historical sociology and political economy, mostly with a focus on the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, and always with an interdisciplinary perspective. One thread in his early work was the analysis of divergent capitalist trajectories in Western Europe and the Ottoman Empire through the nature of agrarian transformations in the two regions. His work on the Ottoman Empire was foundational in pointing toward a re-interpretation of the Empire's economic and social history from a world-systems perspective. This impressive body of work on late Ottoman economic history greatly contributed to what can only be called a 'paradigmatic shift' in the scholarship on this region. This was followed by his path-breaking book on modern Turkey, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (1987), which has become a landmark in the Marxian analysis of Turkish political economy. By analysing the state elite as an autonomous agent in capitalist development, with its own interests and agenda, this book opened the door for research on the contested development of a bourgeois class, and on the political accommodation between the state and businessmen - questions that have since become central in the study of capitalist trajectories in 'late-comer' contexts. In his later works, Keyder's focus has shifted to the analysis of complex urban transformations in Istanbul in the period of neoliberalism and globalization as well as to the changing welfare regime of Turkey in the same period. His work in these fields has greatly contributed to our understanding of the impact of globalization on social, economic and spatial dynamics in Turkey. In authoring and (co-)editing an impressive number of articles, books, collections and journals, Keyder has communicated to younger scholars his penchant for the fruitful synthesis of political economy and historical sociology. Professor Keyder's most recent work has responded to the challenges of globalization, neoliberalism and the current crisis. A limited selection of his publications is listed below.
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