S. Can Açıksöz
Biography
I am a sociocultural and medical anthropologist whose work focuses on violence, gender, and the body. My research examines how injury and disability are governed, represented, and lived, particularly in relation to war, prosthetics, humanitarianism, and nationalist politics. My book, Sacrificial Limbs: Masculinity, Disability, and Political Violence in Turkey (University of California Press, 2019), centers on the post-injury lives and political activism of disabled veterans of Turkey’s Kurdish conflict. The book shows how veterans come to embrace ultranationalist right-wing politics through their gendered and classed experiences of war and disability.
Medical Anthropology Quarterly Book Forum on Sacrificial Limbs
I am currently working on several projects. Prosthetic Promises critically analyzes the transnational production and contestation of medical “success stories” in the field of global disability. Humanitarian Borderlands explores the charged politics of humanitarianism in the Turkish–Syrian borderlands. In addition, I am carrying out a collaborative photo-ethnographic project with survivors of violence in Los Angeles that explores community-based responses to violence and disability. Alongside these long-term projects, I maintain a sustained interest in fascist and populist movements and in assisted reproductive technologies for men.
I teach graduate and undergraduate courses on ethnographic writing, disability, violence, and medical and sociocultural anthropology.
Research Interests
Medical anthropology; political anthropology; critical disability studies; war and political violence; gender and masculinities; veterans; humanitarianism; nationalism and the far-right; politics of reproduction; Turkey, Europe, and the Middle East
Publications
2024 Aciksoz, Salih Can. “Queer terrorists, terrorist queers: The sexual politics of Turkey’s war on terror.” Men and Masculinities 27.4 (2024): 332-354.
2024 Açıksöz, Salih Can. “Ethnographic betrayals: Secrecy, loyalty, and sovereignty in the field.” Current Anthropology 65.S26 (2024): S91-S105.
2020 Prosthetic Debts: Economies of War Disability in Neoliberal Turkey. Current Anthropology 61(21): S000-S000. (Electronically published before print version, DOI: 10.1086/705654)
2019 Sacrificial Limbs: Disability, Masculinity, and Political Violence in Turkey. Oakland: University of California Press. (Read introduction here)
2017 “Grab’Em by the Patriarchy.” Anthropology News 58(3): 10–12. link
2017 He Is a Lynched Soldier Now Coup, Militarism, and Masculinity in Turkey. Journal of Middle East Women’s Studies 13(1): 178-180. PDF
2016 Beyond “the Lesser Evil”: A Critical Engagement with Brexit. Social Anthropology 24(4): 487-488. (co-authored with Umut Yildirim) PDF
2016 Medical Humanitarianism Under Atmospheric Violence: Healthcare Workers in the 2013 Gezi Protests in Turkey. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 40(2): 198-222. PDF
2015 Ghosts Within: Genealogies of War Trauma in Turkey. The Journal of Turkish and Ottoman Studies 2(2): 259-280. PDF
2015 In Vitro Nationalism: Masculinity, Disability and Assisted Reproduction in War Torn Turkey. In Gender and Sexuality in Muslim Cultures, edited by Gul Ozyegin. Farnham: Ashgate. PDF
2014 Ghazis or Beggars: The Double Life of Turkish Disabled Veterans. Ethnologie Française 2014(2): 247-256. PDF
2013 Masculinized Power, Queered Resistance. Cultural Anthropology Online, October 31, 2013. link
2012 Sacrificial Limbs of Sovereignty: Disabled Veterans, Masculinity, and Nationalist Politics in Turkey. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 26(1): 4-26. PDF
