Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-09T06:02:30.191Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Money As Justice: Work-Related Deaths, Victim Workers’ Families, and Injustice in Turkey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 May 2022

Yalçın Özkan Open the ORCID record for Yalçın Özkan [Opens in a new window]
Yalçın Özkan*
Affiliation:
Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, Reed College, Portland, Oregon Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In the event of a work-related death, Turkish law directs the victim’s family to see the death as accidental and understand monetary compensation as a primary vehicle for justice. Based on interview data from a group of victims’ survivors, I examine how the bereaved make sense of accepting money for their losses. Despite the compliance of these families with monetized justice, the interviews suggest that they also have resentments against it. I show that pressing economic needs, a sense of disenfranchisement, and the limited nature of legal counsel lead the survivors to suppress their frustrations. In turn, many come to narrow their expectations of justice to getting what they think of as a fair sum of money. This situated framework, I argue, works to trivialize concerns about workplace safety. Insofar as the families see monetary compensation through a frame of justice, structural factors behind their losses remain unaddressed. Viviana Zelizer has long treated money as being grounded in meanings and moralities. In the tradition of legal consciousness literature, this article extends Zelizer’s fundamental approach by providing a framework to address how the moral underpinning of money can emerge from and reinforce power imbalances and systemic bias in the legal system.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 48 , Issue 1 , February 2023 , pp. 262 - 291
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the American Bar Foundation

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

The author wishes to thank Robert Zussman, Millie Thayer, Kathryne Young, Christopher Dole, Tracy Lord, Ziya Umut Turem, Don Tomaskovic-Devey, Luz Maria Sanchez Duque, the Law & Social Inquiry’s anonymous reviewers and editor Christopher Schmidt for insightful feedback, commentary, and support. Earlier versions of this article were presented at conferences of the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program at Northwestern University, the American Sociological Association, and İlişkisel Sosyal Bilimler Kongresi. The author acknowledges the helpful commentary of those audiences. The research received support from the Mellon/American Council of Learned Societies Dissertation Completion Fellowship and the Sociology Department at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

References

REFERENCES

Abel, Richard. 1990. “A Critique of Torts.” University of California Los Angeles Law Review 37, no. 5: 785–832.Google Scholar
Abu-Lughod, Lila. 1990. “The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power through Bedouin Women.” American Ethnologist 17, no. 1: 41–55.Google Scholar
Adalet Arayana Destek Grubu. 2017. İş Cinayetleri Almanağı 2016. Istanbul: Bir Umut Yayınları.Google Scholar
Adaman, Fikret, Arsel, Murat, and Akbulut, Bengi. 2019. “Neoliberal Developmentalism, Authoritarian Populism, and Extractivism in the Countryside: The Soma Mining Disaster in Turkey.” Journal of Peasant Studies 46, no. 3: 514–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Akın, Levent. 2008. “İş Sağlığı ve Güvenliğinde İşverenin Cezai Sorumluluğu.” TİSK Akademi 3, no. 5: 210–31.Google Scholar
Almond, Paul. 2013. Corporate Manslaughter and Regulatory Reform. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Auyero, Javier, and Alejandra Swistun, Débora. 2009. Flammable: Environmental Suffering in an Argentine Shantytown. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Tom. 2001. “Blood Money, New Money, and the Moral Economy of Tort Law in Action.” Law & Society Review 35, no. 2: 275–319.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bandelj, Nina. 2012. “Relational Work and Economic Sociology. Politics & Society 40, no. 2: 175–201.Google Scholar
Bandelj, Nina. 2020. “Relational Work in the Economy.” Annual Review of Sociology 46, no 15: 251–72.Google Scholar
Berrey, Ellen, Hoffman, Steve G., and Beth Nielsen, Laura. 2012. “Situated Justice: A Contextual Analysis of Fairness and Inequality in Employment Discrimination Litigation.” Law & Society Review 46, no. 1: 1–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Block, Fred. 2012. “Relational Work in Market Economies: Introduction.” Politics & Society 40, no. 2: 135–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990a. The Logic of Practice. Translated by Nice, Richard. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1990b. In Other Words: Essays towards a Reflexive Sociology. Translated by Adamson, Matthew. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1991. Language and Symbolic Power. Translated by Raymond, Gino and Adamson, Matthew. Boston: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bourdieu, Pierre. 2000. Pascalian Meditations. Translated by Nice, Richard. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Brisbin, Richard A. Jr 2010. “Resistance to Legality.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 6: 25–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buğra, Ayşe. 2017. “Türkiye’nin Sosyal Politikaları ve Soma Felaketi.” In Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Soma Araştırma Grubu Raporu, edited by Nuri, Ersoy, 185–202. Istanbul: Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Yayınları.Google Scholar
Bumiller, Kristin. 1988. The Civil Rights Society: The Social Construction of Victims. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Chan, Cheris S. 2009. “Invigorating the Content in Social Embeddedness: An Ethnography of Life Insurance Transactions in China.” American Journal of Sociology 115, no. 3: 712–54.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Comaroff, Jean, and Comaroff, John. 1991. Of Revelation and Revolution. Vol. 1: Christianity, Colonialism, and Consciousness in South Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dodd, Nigel. 2014. The Social Life of Money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eurostat. 2020. “Accidents at Work.” https://appsso.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/nui/submitViewTableAction.do.Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia, and Silbey, Susan. 1998. The Common Place of Law: Stories from Everyday Life. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fourcade, Marion, and Healy, Kieran. 2007. “Moral Views of Market Society.” Annual Review of Sociology 33: 285–311.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fraser, Nancy. 1989. “Talking about Needs: Interpretive Contests as Political Conflicts in Welfare-state Societies.” Ethics 99, no. 2: 291–313.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gabel, Peter, and Feinman, Jay. 1982. “Contract Law as Ideology.” In The Politics of Law: A Progressive Critique, edited by Kairys, David, 172–85. New York: Pantheon.Google Scholar
Gaventa, John. 1982. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Geertz, Clifford. 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Book.Google Scholar
Gilliom, John. 2001. Overseers of the Poor. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, Jennifer. 2005. Suburban Sweatshops. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Güneren, Ali. 2011. İş Kazası veya Meslek Hastalığından Kaynaklanan Maddi ve Manevi Tazminat Davaları. İstanbul: Adalet Yayınevi.Google Scholar
Healy, Kieran. 2006. Last Best Gifts: Altruism and the Market for Human Blood and Organs. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
International Labour Organization. 2016. Occupational Health and Safety Profile: Turkey. Ankara: International Labor Office.Google Scholar
İşçi Sağlığı ve İş Güvenliği Meclisi (Assembly for Workers’ Health and Occupational Safety). 2018. “Report on Work Murders 2017.” http://isigmeclisi.org/19299-report-on-work-murders-in-2017-in-turkey-at-least-two-thousand-and-six-workers-were-murdered-in-2017-.Google Scholar
Jain, Lochlann S. 2006. Injury: The Politics of Product Design and Safety Law in the United States. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Jerolmack, Colin, and Khan, Shamus. 2014. “Talk Is Cheap: Ethnography and the Attitudinal Fallacy.” Sociological Methods & Research 43, no. 2: 178–209.Google Scholar
Kulinski, Daniel. 2016. “An Alarming Situation: Death at Workplace.” Heinrich Böll Stiftung Türkei. https://tr.boell.org/de/2016/09/07/alarming-situation-death-workplace.Google Scholar
Lamont, Michèle, and Swidler, Ann. 2014. “Methodological Pluralism and the Possibilities and Limits of Interviewing.” Qualitative Sociology 37, no. 2: 153–71.Google Scholar
Levitsky, Sandra R. 2008. “What Rights?’ The Construction of Political Claims to American Health Care Entitlements.” Law & Society Review 42, no. 3: 551–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lukes, Steven. 2005. Power: A Radical View. 2nd ed. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Makine Mühendisleri Odası. 2018. İşçi Sağlığı ve İş Güvenliği Oda Raporu. İstanbul: Makine Mühendisleri Odası.Google Scholar
Marshall, Anna-Maria, and Barclay, Scott. 2003. “Symposium Introduction: In Their Own Words: How Ordinary People Construct the Legal World.” Law & Social Inquiry 28, no. 3: 617–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Anna-Maria, and Crocker Hale, Daniel. 2014. “Cause Lawyering.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 10, no. 1: 301–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mauss, Marcel. 2002. The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCann, Micheal. 1994. Rights at Work: Pay Equity Reform and the Politics of Legal Mobilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Merry, Sally Engle. 1995. “Resistance and the Cultural Power of Law.” Law & Society Review 29, no. 1: 11–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mills, Charles Wright. 1940. “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive.” American Sociological Review 5, no. 6: 904–13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mnookin, Robert, and Kornhauser, Lewis. 1979. “Bargaining in the Shadow of the Law: The Case of Divorce.” Yale Law Journal 88: 950–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mütevellitoğlu, Nergis. 2009. “Türkiye’de Çalışma Sürelerinin Uzaması ve Ölümlü İş Kazalarında Artış.” Mesleki Sağlık ve Güvenlik Dergisi 32: 1–12.Google Scholar
Ng, Kwai Hang, and He, Xin. 2017. “The Institutional and Cultural Logics of Legal Commensuration: Blood Money and Negotiated Justice in China.” American Journal of Sociology 122, no. 4: 1104–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Malley, Pat. 2009. The Currency of Justice: Fines and Damages in Consumer Societies. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortner, Sherry B. 1994. “Theory and Anthropology since the Sixties.” In Culture/Power/History, edited by Dirks, Nicholas, Eley, Geoff, Ortner, Serry, 372–412. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ortner, Sherry B. 2006. Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Özar, Şemsa, and Yakut-Cakar, Burcu. 2013. “Unfolding the Invisibility of Women without Men in the Case of Turkey.” Women’s Studies International Forum 41, no. 1: 24–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Özatalay, Cem, Aytemur Nüfusçu, Gözde, and Zeren, Gülistan. 2019. “The Use of Blood Money in the Establishment of Non-Justice: Necrodomination and Resistance.” In Turkey’s Necropolitical Laboratory: Democracy, Violence and Resistance, edited by Bargu, Banu, 160–86. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press.Google Scholar
Özkan, Halid. 2016. “İş Kazalarından Doğan Ceza Sorumluluğunda Kusur Tespiti.” Gazi Üniversitesi Hukuk Fakültesi Dergisi 20, no. 1: 511–71.Google Scholar
Özveri, Murat. 2015. İşçi Sağlığı, İş Güvenliği ve İş Cinayetleri. İstanbul: Birleşik Metal İş Yayınları.Google Scholar
Quinn, Sarah. 2008. “The Transformation of Morals in Markets: Death, Benefits, and the Exchange of Life Insurance Policies.” American Journal of Sociology 114: 738–80.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Radin, Margaret J. 1996. Contested Commodities. Boston: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Reich, Adam D. 2014. “Contradictions in the Commodification of Hospital Care.” American Journal of Sociology 119, no. 6: 1576–1628.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sandefur, Rebecca L. 2007. “The Importance of Doing Nothing: Everyday Problems and Responses of Inaction.” In Transforming Lives: Law and Social Process, edited by Pleasence, Pascoe, Buck, Alexy, and Balmer, Nigel, 112–32. London: The Stationery Office.Google Scholar
Sandel, Micheal. 2012. What Money Can’t Buy: The Moral Limits of Markets. New York: Farrar & Giroux.Google Scholar
Satz, Debra. 2010. Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saymaz, İsmail. 2016. Fıtrat: İş Kazası Değil Cinayet. Istanbul: İletişim Yayınlar.Google Scholar
Sewell, William H. 2005. Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shdaimah, Corey S. 2009. Negotiating Justice: Progressive Lawyering, Low-income Clients, and the Quest for Social Change. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Shklar, N. Judith. 1990. The Faces of Injustice. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Silbey, Susan. 2005. “After Legal Consciousness.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 1: 323–68CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simon, Jonathan. 1988. “The Ideological Effects of Actuarial Practices.” Law & Society Review 22, no. 4: 771–800.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, Adrian. 2014. “The Bunk House Rules: A Materialist Approach to Legal Consciousness in the Context of Migrant Workers’ Housing in Ontario.” Osgoode Hall Law Journal 52: 863–904.Google Scholar
Somers, Margaret R., and Block, Fred. 2005. “From Poverty To Perversity: Ideas, Markets, and Institutions over 200 Years of Welfare Debate.” American Sociological Review 70, no. 2: 260–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steiner, Philippe. 2013. “Markets and Culture: Viviana Zelizer’s Economic lives.” Economy and Society 42, no. 2: 322–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steinzor, Rena. 2015. Why Not Jail? New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Swidler, Ann. 1986. “Culture in Action.” American Sociological Review 51, no. 2: 273–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tucker, Eric. 1992. “Getting Justice and Getting Even: Legal Consciousness among Working-Class Americans.” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 7: 265–67.Google Scholar
Wilkis, Ariel. 2017. The Moral Power of Money: Morality and Economy in the Poor People Life. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Young, Kathryne M. 2014. “Everyone Knows the Game: Legal Consciousness in the Hawaiian Cockfight: Legal Consciousness in the Hawaiian Cockfight.” Law & Society Review 48, no. 3: 499–530.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Young, Kathryne M., and Billings, Katie R.. 2020. “Legal Consciousness and Cultural Capital.” Law & Society Review 54, no. 1: 33–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelizer, Viviana A. 1979. Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States. New York: Columbia University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelizer, Viviana A. 1994. The Social Meaning of Money. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Zelizer, Viviana A. 2000. “The Purchase of Intimacy.” Law & Social Inquiry 25, no. 3: 817–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zelizer, Viviana A. 2005. The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Zelizer, Viviana A. 2012. “How I Became a Relational Economic Sociologist and What Does That Mean?” Politics & Society 40, no. 2: 145–74.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zussman, Robert. 2000. “Autobiographical Occasions.” Qualitative Sociology 23, no. 1: 5–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar