This is an insightful book on a very delicate, complicated, and contested issue; namely, the headscarf in Turkey. The author discloses that the scholarly debate on this issue has so far focused on and presented the experiences of “middle-class, educated, Islamic activist” women with headscarves as the “dominant storyline” (p. 3). The literature has concentrated on these women’s struggle “to gain recognition [for] Islamic identity in the state-monitored public sphere”; i.e., at universities and in employment in the public sector (p. 4). Following the last decade’s political developments and the ensuing transformation regarding the connotations and significations of the headscarf, recent studies have shifted their focus from “declarations of collective identity toward investigations of individualization” among these women (p. 12). In other words, middle-class women’s stories continue to dominate the research agenda. As Sayan-Cengiz argues, these women’s experiences, however significant, is far from capturing the heterogeneity of the experiences of all urban women with headscarves in Turkey.

The study aims at, and achieves, pushing the headscarf debate in Turkey into “new territory by questioning the culturalization of the headscarf and by pointing out the significance of class and gender stratification in shaping the meanings and roles of the headscarf” (p. 5). It explores “the continuously negotiated meanings” of the headscarf among “lower middle-class, non-university-educated” Turkish women with headscarves, who have been marginalized and overlooked by the dominant storyline (p. 3). This shift from the relatively upper to the relatively lower classes corresponds to a shift from the public to the private sector, where precarity is the rule for “lower middle-class” women and where exclusion against women with headscarves prevails. The author chooses to focus on the retail sector because of the prevalence of insecure employment and, more prominently, the particular politics of appearance in this sector.

The work draws on fieldwork carried out in five Turkish cities—İstanbul, Ankara, Denizli, Gaziantep, and Kayseri—which involved focus groups and in-depth interviews with nearly 80 saleswomen wearing headscarves. The author also conducted a handful of interviews with employers, as well as conducting participant observation in retail settings. Including the introduction and conclusion, this concise book is organized into seven chapters. In the introduction and Chapter 2, the author engages with the literature on the headscarf in Turkey, specifically criticizing the culturalization of the headscarf. By “culturalization,” she means two interrelated but separate theoretical problems: firstly, the overemphasis on cultural difference (i.e., recognition) at the expense of issues of social inequality (i.e., redistribution); and secondly, the reification of the identity of women with headscarves, thereby connoting a fixed, coherent lifestyle (i.e., Islamic) pitted against another lifestyle (i.e., secular). Instead, the author argues for the significance of social inequality and the heterogeneity of the experiences of women with headscarves.

Chapter 3 presents an overview of the world of retail in which women with headscarves can work. The author discovers that large-scale retailers and shopping malls, which offer better working conditions and higher status for saleswomen, seldom employ women with headscarves. Moreover, this exclusion of women with headscarves from certain retail settings is very much normalized by the employers. As a result of such exclusions, there are three retail settings left in which women with headscarves can find a job in sales: small shops in traditional marketplaces in city centers, small neighborhood shops, and the tesettür (that is, headscarf-oriented) chain stores. The research covers women working in all three of these settings.

In Chapter 4, the author presents a detailed picture of the exclusion of women with headscarves from certain retail settings. It showcases both the narratives of women concerning their exclusion and the discourses employers use to legitimize this practice. This chapter sheds light on “how the headscarf, combined with a lower middle-class identity and a lack of university education” comes to be categorized as the very cheapest of cheap labor (p. 97). Chapter 5 deals with women’s experiences in relation to and reactions against the meanings loaded onto the headscarf. The first meaning that the author defines is skepticism, by which she means the dislike for women with headscarves exhibited primarily by secular people. The second meaning, one proposed largely by Islamist authors, posits the headscarf as a sign of deep religious conviction. However, many participants reveal that they are far from being perfect Muslims. In this regard, the author chooses to conclude with one participant’s comment, “everyone lives religion as they see fit” (p. 119). Chapter 6, entitled “The Desire to Be Unmarked,” documents and examines how the women use both practice and discourse to distance themselves from a high level of piety. Some claim that there are grades of covering and religiosity and that they are only “half-covered.” Others explain that they would uncover for a better and more promising job if that was necessary for employment. Still others blur the line between being covered and being uncovered. Overall, as the author claims, the findings “uncover articulations of the meanings of the headscarf as rather fluid, dynamic, and contingent on patriarchal bargains and negotiations for higher status jobs” (p. 154).

This book makes a timely and much needed contribution to the literature. Nonetheless, there are several weaknesses that need to be mentioned. First of all, the book is too closely focused on one single literature; namely, the issue of headscarf in Turkey. The only additional literature with which the author engages is that concerning employment in the retail sector. While this limitedness might be welcomed as compactness, in this particular case it seems to result in several weaknesses. A book such as this one would have done well to at least casually engage with the literatures of work in Turkey, of the sociology of everyday religion, and of class. The author has not utilized the flourishing literatures on female employment and women workers in Turkey, not even mentioning the country’s extremely low female labor force participation rate, a rate which is even lower among the urban and less educated. Engaging with this literature and the issues it raises would clarify and better contextualize the precarity that these women have to face, as well as informing readers about the prevailing conditions and prospects of “lower middle-class” women in the labor market beyond retail. The sociology of everyday religion, on the other hand, would enrich the theoretical findings of the book, because the fact that religious meanings are fluid, dynamic, and contingent for the layman and laywoman, especially among the working classes, is a quite richly elaborated theme in that literature.

The lack of engagement with the literature of class is also salient in that class, as a concept, is at the very core of the book. Despite this centrality, however, there is no definition of or specific reference to class provided, which results in a somewhat slippery usage of the term. For example, in one instance the author calls Çıksalın, an İstanbul neighborhood, a lower-class neighborhood (p. 115), although it was earlier presented as “home to many lower middle-class families” (p. 66). Sayan-Cengiz seems to define the society by and large as dissolving into the three compartments of the upper middle class, the middle class, and the lower middle class. Such a non-analytical usage of the concept of class weakens the impact of the book’s main theoretical argument, which is precisely the significance of class in the experience of being a woman with a headscarf. Had the author, for example, used the concept of working class instead of that of lower middle class, her analysis would correspond more closely both to her own political aims and to the framework of Nancy Fraser, the primary theorist on whom she relies to defend the significance of class.

One last point of criticism concerns a dilemma of the study. The author rightfully criticizes the binary of “new veilers” and “traditional veilers,” which presents the former as Islamist and middle class and the latter as less pious and lower middle class. Despite this critique, though, the book itself seems to reproduce this binary. As the author shows, working-class women have to engage with “intricate negotiations” (p. 15) to survive in such an insecure labor market, and this tends to render Islamism a luxury for them. But this is most likely only a tendency insofar as class does not determine subjectivities but only establishes strong tendencies. The book presents a picture wherein lower middle-class women with headscarves, as a group, do not embrace Islamism or any other strict version of Islam. This may well be the case among the women with whom the author interacted. However, for instance, in one focus group discussion a woman named Gülay made a relatively stricter statement, one which contradicts the author’s own argument in the section in question (p. 136). Somewhat understandably, the author may have preferred to focus on the attitude of the majority in order to better emphasize the main empirical contribution of the book; namely, the differences in religious conduct among different classes. Even so, instead of attributing radicalism to the middle class and detecting its lack among members of the working class, it would have been more stimulating to have scrutinized the nuances of different radicalisms, which is in fact probably marginal in both classes.

All in all, such criticisms notwithstanding, Beyond Headscarf Culture in Turkey’s Retail Sector makes a crucial, ethico-political, and empirically grounded contribution to the debate on the headscarf and Islam, as well as on working-class women in Turkey. To engage and at the same time do justice to both “the exploitation problem” and “the recognition problem” in the context of such a politically loaded issue is a steep mountain to climb. But in embracing just such a difficult job, Sayan-Cengiz has produced a thought-provoking and inspirational work.