@article{2025:tank:proving_on,
title = {Proving One’s Expertise and Its Worth: Agronomists’, Forestry Engineers’, and Veterinarians’ Rhetoric on the Essential Utility of Their Knowledge in the Ottoman Empire and Republic of Turkey},
year = {2025},
note = {How do members of a novel profession gain recognition for their
expertise and negotiate its value? This article examines this
historically rooted yet persistently relevant question by focusing on
the experiences of agronomists, forestry engineers, and veterinarians
in the late Ottoman Empire and early Republican Turkey
(1890s–1930s). These then-nascent professions faced shared
challenges: agronomists worked to earn the trust of farmers,
veterinarians contested with farriers over livestock care, and all
three professions confronted public scepticism, ridicule, and
inadequate compensation despite their extensive scientific training
and vital contributions to the economy, public health, and
environmental conservation. Drawing on their writings in mainstream
press and professional journals, as well as historical interviews with
them, this study explores the strategies agronomists, forestry
engineers, and veterinarians employed to carve out a new social and
economic space for themselves. By analysing their efforts, the article
uncovers how experts in emerging fields navigate resistance while
striving to redefine societal rewards to secure a place in the new
world they are helping to shape – one where economic recognition
should be rooted in scientific contributions, which they present as
the foundation of progress and advancement.},
journal = {DIYÂR},
pages = {81--116},
author = {Tanık, Meriç},
volume = {6},
number = {1}
}