The Cow Feast: An Anthropological Reflection on Academic Rituals in Turkey

This study is an attempt to reflect on and analyze the cow feast (İnek Bayramı) in Mulkiye taking approaches in anthropology of science and under the concept of authoritarian modernization in the context of Turkey. The cow feast is an academic ritual that was held annually in May at the Faculty of Political Science (Siyasal Bilgiler Fakültesi) of Ankara University in Turkey before the Covid-19 epidemic and the emergence of some security, political and health issues and considerations. In this article, we seek to theoretically formulate the role and function of such a ceremony in the establishment and stability of a new epistemological system based on the collected data about this feast, and interviews with key informants, and of course referring to historical and contextual sources. Our reflection reveals that the cow feast is a compensatory ritual in the face of the epistemological crisis of the late Ottoman and early Turkish Republics, and can be understood and analysed with integration of components of Sharon Traweek, Emily Martin, Tony Bechter, Peter Trowler, Bruno Latour and Victor Turner’s ideas largely from anthropology of science.