Yildiz Atasoy

Background and Research Interests:

Dr. Yildiz Atasoy, Professor of Sociology, Associate Member in the Latin American Studies Program, and Associate Member in the School for International Studies, received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Toronto in 1998. She joined the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at SFU in 2002. Prior to her position at SFU, Dr. Atasoy was a Visiting Assistant Professor (2001-2002) at the University of Michigan-Flint; a Limited-Term Assistant Professor (1999-2001) at the University of Manitoba; and an Instructor (1998-1999) at Ryerson Polytechnic University. Her primary area of research deals with long-term historical changes in the world economy and the social, political, and economic dynamics that underlie them. Dr. Atasoy grounds her analysis in a theory of social change that links global relations of capital accumulation, political alliances and the transnational dynamics of social movements with the political and discursive tensions of national politics. This set of transnational processes problematizes the dichotomous conception of "global" versus "local," and thus presents a challenge to Euro-American models of economic development. Dr. Atasoy has also done research on the Islamic politics of the veil across transnational space. Her current research focuses on the political economy of food in Turkey and Brazil.

Dr. Atasoy draws her data from government documents, official statistics, national and international organizations, ethnographies, interviews, histories, and other secondary sources. Her work incorporates information from such fields as political science, economics, international relations, cultural studies, history, anthropology, and geography. Dr. Atasoy has published in various journals including Journal of Agrarian Change, International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, Socialist Register, Studies in Political Economy, European Journal of Cultural Studies, Sociological Focus, Social Compass, Gender and Society, and Canadian Journal of Sociology.