Türkiye’deki Yatılı Kur’an Kursları Erving Goffman’ın Total Kurum Kategorisine Girer mi?
Do Boarding Qur’an Courses In Turkiye Fall Into Erving Goffman’s Total Institution Category?

Summary/Abstract: This research examines whether Turkish boarding Qur’an courses can be considered within the framework of what Erving Goffman calls the “total institution”. For Goffman, a “total institution” is defined as a place of residence and work in which a large number of similarly situated individuals, cut off from the general society for a fairly long period of time, are surrounded by the institution and maintain a formally regulated life cycle. According to Goffman, there are five types of total institutions. The fourth of these, such as military barracks, ships, boarding schools, labor camps, colonial settlements, “institutions that are said to have been established for the better performance of work-like tasks and that legitimize themselves solely on these instrumental grounds”, is the most relevant to Qur’an boarding courses. The main problem of this study is to determine the extent to which boarding Qur’an courses in Türkiye fit this description. The aim of the study is to analyze the Qur’an boarding courses in Türkiye according to Goffman’s criteria of “total institution”. In this context, there is an important gap in the literature as no study has been conducted on this subject. Our article aims to contribute to filling this gap and to understand the place of boarding Qur’an courses in the social structure, and also aims to analyze the functioning of boarding Qur’an courses in Türkiye and the experiences of students by using Goffman’s theoretical framework. Based on the theoretical and empirically based data obtained from the study, a pilot exploratory study with 20 questions was prepared and interviews were conducted with three participants who are experts in the field. The results showed that boarding Qur’an courses in Türkiye have the characteristics of total institutions. The supervision of students and the existence of strict rules indicate that these courses have the characteristics of total institutions. However, the issue is not only whether an institution is a total institution, but also how total it is. A total institution has the potential to undermine the individuality of the people within it. Maintaining discipline in boarding Qur’an courses does not only have to be done through strict rules and undermining the individuality of the students; it must be ensured that they love and embrace the institution they are in.

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