Different periods, similar challenges, opposing paths: Exploring the social structure of popular science magazines in Turkey

Abstract

This study questions the social relations behind the challenges that popular science magazines in Turkey have faced from their onset, by focusing on the peculiarities of different historical periods and prevailing relations of production. The history of popular science magazines from the Ottoman Empire to the present day is also the history of the transition from artisan-like relations of production to factory-like relations of production and more. In this long historical period, premodern social relations and market conditions come to the fore as the main source of the challenges these magazines face. In recent years, big capital’s interest in popular science and the enthusiastic struggle of “zero capital” magazines on the other hand reveal two different sides of the picture. Similar challenges and divergent experiences across different periods indicate that popularizing science goes far beyond bringing science to lay people. This study shows that it is possible to trace a frustrated story of modernization, as well as economic and political turmoil, in these magazines’ survival struggle in a country which has not been closely studied in this respect.