"A subtle and delicate textual content on household carrier in Turkey that singles itself out by way of a robust account of the micro-sociology of strength. It engages the reader in a lot broader debates concerning the mutual family members of sophistication and gender, the position of patriarchal controls in shaping casual woman hard work markets and the administration of prestige differentials via girls of their day-by-day lives. a tremendous scholarly contribution written in a lucid and available style."

--Deniz Kandiyoti, college of Oriental and African reports, college of London

Untidy Gender takes readers into the interconnected worlds of Turkish maids and the ladies who hire them, tracing the incorporation of rural migrant ladies into the interiors of the household spheres of the city middle-classes. Firmly grounded in info gathered via a consultant survey of one hundred sixty household staff, in-depth interviews, and player remark within the kinship-based groups of household employees, this ebook forges a brand new realizing of the complicated interplay among gender and sophistication subordination.

Ozyegin strains the lives of 2 types of staff; these from the squatter settlements who paintings in a couple of destinations, and people who dwell with husbands hired as "doorkeepers" or development superintendents within the basements of middle-class house structures. In a literal "upstairs, downstairs" association, the latter girls occasionally tackle condo cleansing for consumers within the building.

At the guts of the ebook are a few ironies approximately patriarchy. at the floor, husbands have absolute keep an eye on over even if their other halves paintings, yet a few girls paintings in mystery, and people "doorkeeper" husbands who let their better halves to paintings usually offer baby care themselves. mockingly, the very constraints at the spatial and social mobility of the ladies creates a hard work industry during which family employees' hard work is pricey and never simply coming near near, which, in flip, provides them a level of strength in negotiating their dating with their middle-class employers.

Untidy Gender bargains insights not just into the gender and sophistication dynamics of Turkish society, yet contributes to the refinement of important phrases of feminist scholarship and study on paintings within the casual region, cross-class family among girls, gender and sophistication inequality, and women's reviews of modernity and urbanization. the writer ends with a private account of her personal problems with the category tensions of the maid-employer relationship.

"Untidy Gender makes contributions to a great number of debates in different social technological know-how fields and sub-fields. And it does so on a very sound methodological base: Ozyegin used to be capable of build a random pattern for her 'women within the basement.' this can be the top-rated of analysis, and should be particular within the examine annals of reviews of household workers."

--Rae Lesser Blumberg, William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology, collage of Virginia

"This unique booklet sheds new gentle at the dynamics of modernity and newly constituted city identities. via a cautious ethnographic research of paid household paintings, Ozyegin illuminates the numerous ways that family of sophistication and gender inequalities are formed and maintained. American audiences drawn to rural-urban migrants, in intersectionalities of race, classification, and gender, and in identities, strength, and resistance within the place of work will locate essentially the most compelling ethnography and lots of worthwhile theoretical nuggets during this book."

--Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, affiliate Professor, division of Sociology, college of Southern California

"Ozyegin provides a state of the art research of the complexities of modernization by way of targeting gender kin. whereas heading off quite a few rhetorical traps round questions of 'difference' Ozyegin seamlessly weaves jointly a thoughtfully articulated thought with a meticulous empirical research of patriarchal and sophistication relations...