I am a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Economy and Society at Johns Hopkins University. Focusing on economic and political sociology from a global perspective, my research is motivated by longstanding questions concerning the division of labor and well-being, the dynamics of boundaries and identities, and the micro-macro problem. In addressing these questions, I prize analytical clarity and complement various methodologies depending on the specific research question. Always fascinated by polymaths and Swiss Army knives, I draw from qualitative, comparative-historical, and computational methods, including in-depth interviews, ethnography, network analysis, text mining, and agent-based modeling.
PhD in Sociology, 2020
Yale University
MSc in Industrial Engineering, 2015
Boğaziçi University
BSc in Industrial Engineering, 2011
Boğaziçi University
White-Collar Blues (forthcoming in June 2025 from Columbia University Press), examines the rise of a new Turkish upper-middle class and its discontent with work. During the developmentalist era of the 1960s-70s, state-employed doctors, lawyers, and engineers were seen as role models for “making it.” However, with Turkey’s tighter integration into the global economy, the neoliberalism of the post-1980s introduced professional-managerial employees of transnational corporations as the new symbols of success. Focusing on their quality of working life narratives through more than 100 interviews held in Istanbul and New York, I follow these elite workers as they are selected into, survive within, and opt out of corporate careers. Despite their upward mobility, many professionals’ narratives resonate with what I call white-collar blues: burnout and disappointment with demanding yet unfulfilling careers. Extending from the Turkish case, I develop a theory of middle-class alienation that accounts for how middle-class investments in education lead to high hopes, which then clash with the realities of poor work-life balance, low intrinsic satisfaction, and a felt lack of meaning from labor. White-Collar Blues reveals the hidden costs of seeking higher pay and status.
Mustafa Yavaş. 2025. White-Collar Blues: The Making of the Transnational Turkish Middle Class. Columbia University Press.
Mustafa Yavaş. 2024. “White-Collar Opt-Out: How ‘Good Jobs’ Fail Elite Workers,” American Sociological Review, 89(4): 761-88.
Türkoğlu, Didem, Meltem Odabaş, Doruk Tunaoğlu, and Mustafa Yavaş. 2022. “Political Polarisation in Social Media: Competing Understandings of Democracy in Turkey,” South European Society and Politics, 27(2): 223-251.
Mustafa Yavaş. 2019. “Boundary Blurring as Collective Identity Formation? The Case of the Left-wing Islamists in Turkey," Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change, 43: 109-131.
Mustafa Yavaş. 2019. “Dissecting Income Segregation: Impacts of Concentrated Affluence on Segregation of Poverty,” Journal of Mathematical Sociology, 43(1): 1-22.
Yavaş, Mustafa and Gönenç Yücel. 2014. “Impact of Status Homophily on Diffusion Dynamics over Social Networks,” Social Science Computer Review, 32(3): 354-372. [Corresponding Author]
The Certificate in College Teaching Preparation from Yale’s Poorvu Center for Teaching and Learning, Fall 2019 (granted upon completion of a comprehensive training in effective teaching)
INSTRUCTOR
New York University Abu Dhabi, Department of Social Research and Public Policy
Yale University, Department of Sociology
TEACHING FELLOW
Johns Hopkins University, Center for Economy and Society
Yale University, Department of Sociology
Yale University, School of Management
Gateway Community College
Bogazici University, Industrial Engineering